#but this is more about that meta-narrative tension as well as the specific intent of fma 03 using death in general across its story
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Regarding the last reblog:
Scar's death in the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime is narratively poignant, characterized to perfection, and builds on the themes that were core to him and the show beautifully.
While watching Brotherhood, all I could think, particularly during the Scar vs Bradley showdown "If this fucking story kills Scar it will be complete unmitigating trash." Because a show that has already royally failed its themes regarding genocide, racism, and imperialism tossing the one named genocide victim six feet under would be narratively bankrupt.
But as we all know, in mangahood Scar lives. Worse, more disastrous writing averted! But the cost is that of recuperating him as an agent of his own people's full colonization. So I circle back to fma 03 and have an even greater appreciation in the way a character death, when written with a respect for the story's themes, who the character was, and what pillars of the overarching story this character holds up, can truly enhance all of these facets of a narrative.
And like I've mused before, there is a meta-narrative formed by the contrast between fma 03 and mangahood. That it is more true to the character, more noble, to die as the radical who frees a people from an invading armada than it is to survive for the express purpose of becoming a cog in that very same machine.
I have never been mad at fma 03 for having my fave die in triumph and reclamation of a lost familial connection. But I have been frustrated at the disrespected version of my fave possibly facing death, and deeply disappointed at his survival being little more than a narrative tool to declare the virtues of a 'cleansed' military in the epilogue.
It's not about whether your fave lives or dies: its about the purpose it all serves to the stories and themes.
#it should be said that it's a false dichotomy for a radical to only have two final routes: die as a radical or survive as a collaborator#but this is more about that meta-narrative tension as well as the specific intent of fma 03 using death in general across its story#to examine structural oppression and the folly of harm between individuals on a personal level#it's been asked why 03 fans could possibly love this adaptation when most characters are not spared some degree of the suffering#that a story about tragedy oppression resistance and hubris (when actually written to its logical ends) entails#and this is a big part of my answer to that why#as well as my rebuttal to the last reblog about the sadness of the death of the fictional person#it's good grief#scar fma#fma 03#fmab#meta#mine
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that thing about the chapters makes total sense yeah! i liked hearing you break down the themes and realisations etc, it's nice to hear meaty info about the creative process and undercurrents in the work alongside the jokier interactive posts you guys usually make!
and we are both aware that we could probably cut certain scenes or events out, but we also are very adamant about maintaining a pace that feels realistic and makes sense, which usually leads to those higher word counts 😙
the word count splitting absolutely makes sense then, too - two halves of a whole. i'm surprised people have complained about wanting you to cut down on actual scenes for word count purposes... i wouldnt want to lose action or scenes themselves! maybe they meant more brevity or succintness? not repeating things that don't add to the narrative as much, etc. because the dialogue between characters is the most exciting part, as it usually is in storytelling! its happening NOW, we're IN IT with these characters, its so compelling compared to description or that famous bane of writers' lives: long recountings of events that happened previously or 'offscreen'.
please don't cut out action scenes and dialogue - i'm thinking of how my heart picked up when mike was waiting for will to get the sparklers, that tension was so well played... and also the final scene of 10.2, how fast mike's realisations moved as he kissed will into the sand. a vast contrast to how long it took to get there - so perhaps your stylistic choice is to slow the pace and draw out that delicious tension by making characters very pedantic and introspective rather than by adding more external action, dialogue, or obstacles that prevent them getting where they want to go. mike and will ARE their own biggest obstacles, it seems. and perhaps this is the vibe you wanted to create; it makes for a story that really feeds into the cloyingness of being stuck in your head and being stuck in one place - camp - no matter how much the boys both love it. the camp itself becomes a crucible for the story, giving the reader themselves something of the same claustrophobic feeling mike and will must have. very meta!
i’m so glad that helped clear things up from our perspective! we like to largely let the fic speak for itself obviously, so we usually refrain from flat out saying what the intention behind certain decisions was, but in the context of asks like this and the og regarding chapter/overall fic structure, it did seem fitting to clarify the purposes of chapters 9 and 10 more specifically so i’m glad everything makes sense! sorry for the absolute beast of an answer that’s going to follow, except for i’m not. teehee
regarding the word count, i don’t think we’ve been told outright that we should cut down on certain scenes to keep the wc lower, aside from maybeeee a comment or two that i can remember remarking on us over-describing or over-narrating things? which is probably true at times but also honestly that’s just me n thea’s writing style, so if there is something really egregious we will likely catch it while editing and otherwise we’ll just let it slide 🤷🏽♀️ overall though, i feel like it’s more of an implied thing — since we talk often about chapters taking longer to get out due to our typical 20-30k count, i’m sure a few people have wondered why we choose to include all of the interactions and details that we do. thea did actually give me the push i needed to take out an almost 2k chunk that we both loved but agreed was a little clunky and unnecessary in the context of what was happening, and its removal wasn’t detracting from any characters or relationships or worldbuilding in the chapter. so there are definitely times that we do decide something isn’t important enough to tack on a couple thousand extra words, and we will rectify that when possible!
this also brings me to your point about Long Recountings of Offscreen Events — that’s also something we try really hard to avoid, and when we do want to recount something that happened in the past or offscreen, as is natural for basically every story, we do try to make it feel natural and in the moment, like a character is simply remembering or thinking about something instead of trying to catch the reader up to present day. i LOVEE writing dialogue, maybe too much (i added almost all of the 1700ish words i deleted back again with dialogue. oops) but i completely agree with you in that the In The Moment-ness of it all is what’s most compelling to me as well — writing their reactions as they happen, or adding distinctive mannerisms and thoughts and motions while two or more characters speak.,, ougghh it makes my brain vibrate. but of course you need narration and descriptions to fill in those gaps, and i hope our efforts come off as at least somewhat successful! and for the most part, fleshing out the characters and the story and setting as much as possible is just as key to us as the Byler Moments are — if we wanted to focus on only every interaction mike and will had with each other while tabling those with the rest of the party, background/original characters, or the setting of camp as a whole, we would write a much different (and much shorter) fic instead :-)
finally, about 10.2 specifically: THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH WHDBHDHDGDJ <- me blubbering with happiness FRRR. thea can tell you firsthand that i spent many weeks banging my head against my desk trying to hammer out the entirety of the bonfire scene and its transitions — it was particularly tricky for me to try and balance general pacing with the inclusion of other characters And having everything lead up to the final moments, so i’m so so so glad it was a good read and that everything felt fitting and intentional because it was definitely meant to be! thea mentioned this in the last ask but will in ch09 gets kind of bowled over by his realization moment all at once, whereas mike kind of has two separate ones — one in 10.1, and one at the end of 10.2, both helping him come to terms with similar but different aspects of his romantic feelings and processing them and moving forward — and i didn’t want them to feel like the same moment happening twice (past a certain obvious degree).
they definitely are their own worst obstacles, especially in a modern au that takes away a good amount (but definitely not all!) of the canon universe pressure of comphet and sexuality and conformation. i know this is a big reason people tend to shy away from modern aus in this fandom, because it’s true that the source material is pretty heavy on these themes, and i have my thoughts on this that i’ll probably expand on soon, but to me, in doing so, it’s kind of a really fun exercise in fleshing out their internal struggles and playing off of those more, if that makes sense: their shared stubbornness, self-repression, reactivity and emotional tendencies, etc, but also the fact that they are very kind, generous, and loyal characters who, at least in the context of acswy, are more scared of being hurt by each other or themselves than they are actually invested in “hating” each other. and you bring up an excellent point as well, probably something that has been more of a subconscious but known goal for us than something we are On Purpose trying to get across: everything is happening in one location during one part of the year for a reason! they’ve had good memories here and bad, both in regards to each other and their friendship and otherwise, and are drawn to coming back every summer just as much as they are each other. with the brief exception of ch09 (although the context of it is a Rare Day Away From Camp, so the idea is still there lol), the emotional journey of the mainline fic very much plays out in the same place to try and convey that.
sorry for the essay long answer to your long ask in response to a long answer in response to a long ask — it’s just very very fulfilling to know that people are noticing our choices and the reasons behind them when we make so many of them intentionally! thank you again and i’m soooo so so glad you enjoyed 10.2 🥳🥳🥳
#took me my entire lunch break to type this out on mobile#worth it#if thea has any additional thoughts she can just edit this whenever#and also sorry for going on like 17 small tangents but unfortunately i have thoughts and you’ve given me#an outlet for them so. HA#this was lovely to read and think about!! thank you again anon#asks#acswy spoilers#<- obviously#ch10
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I feel like I can’t stress enough how important Spinner is to the ‘My Villain Academia’ arc, and how badly I need BONES to give him the attention and care in portraying him that he deserves. BONES have been pretty faithful to the manga, they’ve followed the story and brought each scene on the page to the screen... Except for some reason not when it comes to the Villains. Maybe it’s because arguably the Villains wasn’t the focal point of the show and they weren’t what most viewers watched the show to see; fine, but that was the case in the beginning and no longer.
Shigaraki Tomura, his exploits, his character, his story *is* the manga: the Heroes and protag react mainly to him and his actions, his past and motivations is one of the main factors that caused the current central conflict, and resolving his character arc is what will probably bring the whole series - to its end or near end. Yeah, imo I argue that everything about him moves the plot along.
Unfortunately(?), I think Horikoshi-sensei realized/decided/planned this a bit too late in his pacing. He said himself during the Stain arc or so that at first, he wasn’t planning on doing villain profiles - he wanted the villains to be scary.
But for the time being, I have no intention of writing about [the villains]. I do the introductions because l personally like those sorts of behind-the-scenes things, and also because I want my readers to feel a connection to the characters. But with villains, I decided I can't have them too likable. They're supposed to be terrifying.
Often it’s what we don’t know/understand/predict/expect (and therefore can’t get a grasp on) that makes things scary/uncomfortable/dislikable. The Villains were strange, seemingly erratic and incomprehensible in their behavior and motivations, malicious without rhyme or reason. Even now, I think a lot of people still think they’re just ‘completely evil crazy psychopaths’.
Anyways, the quote from him is from Volume 7. A whole bunch of volumes later in Vol. 23, he decided nvm: “The story has evolved beyond that point, so I'm ready to start doing villain profiles.” As he said himself, the profiles are to help the readers connect with the characters, make them relatable and likable. That’s what My Villain Academia is all about in the meta sense - to demystify Shigaraki Tomura and his ragtag chaos friends, to give them depth, and to induce interest in their stories, if not sympathy. Hype them up for the rather major roles they play in this ‘final arc’ of the series.
Enter Spinner, the lizard ninja guy.
Besides his unusual looks, Spinner is really, truly nothing special. He’s got a weak quirk, he holds no title of being the strongest or smartest or whatever member of the League, he’s not related by blood or thematically to any major players in the main conflicts, and his ‘tragic’ backstory is completely mundane compared to his allies - he was bullied as a child, and so is fueled by resentment. In the events leading up to the start of the arc, Spinner is the most moral and understandable of the Villains - has a ‘good’ reason for his crimes (eradicate corrupted Heroes), has standards on who he’s willing to fight (questions attacking the police and anyone with a ‘true heroic spirit’), and wants a concrete game plan instead of aimless discord the rest of the League seems alright with.
Once the arc starts, we immediately learn the basics of his character - he’s got a heteromorph quirk that makes his appearance a humanoid gecko and it’s something he was born with that he can’t control, and yet he faces discrimination from literal KKK-type cultists who refuse to see him as human. This was more or less his life in his small, rural hometown, harsh enough that his heart had become ‘completely empty’. It’s simple, it’s relatable and an realistic analogy anyone who has faced prejudice and harassment and been hurt by it can understand.
All this is so Spinner ends up being the most normal and typical sympathetic of the League of Villains, which sets him up to be a sort of ‘gateway Villain’. It’s why he’s narrator. He doesn’t understand at all the crazy All For One shenanigans, he’s thinks Shigaraki is an incompetent weirdo, and he asks what we were all thinking: “Shigaraki Tomura, what the fuck are you doing.” Quite obviously, Spinner’s meant the audience surrogate and so he is. That being a core of the way the story of My Villain Academia is told means it needs be followed by the anime adaption.
This core sets up the rest of the arc - sets up how we will come to view Shigaraki Tomura and his backstory, alongside the rest of the League Villains, their relationships and dynamics with each other, and who they are at heart. Shigaraki’s telling of his distorted origins in Chapter 222 is horrifying as it is already; but it’s Spinner’s worried-facial-expressions reactions littered throughout the chapter that adds to it by telling us one major thing: Spinner’s an empathetic guy, because he immediately feels a kindred spirit with Shigaraki when the latter talks about the hollowness he feels. So begins the audience surrogate’s change of opinion and us readers going along with it, and also: that Shigaraki Tomura now has Spinner’s concern and attention - and is deserving of it.
Pardon the sudden heavily edited quote, but CS Lewis says,
Friendship arises...when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common...which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique [burden]. The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." ...And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.
That’s almost word for word Spinner in that moment, suddenly realizing he’s no longer as alone as he thought. He’s no longer as alone, and this means perhaps neither should Shigaraki. Because established in that very chapter, too, is the hate in Shigaraki’s heart fueled by his grief and despair, the loss of his family, past, and faith in others, his misery of thinking he’ll never feel good again. Yet - there’s Spinner, willing to extend some empathy and care, the very antidote to all that Shigaraki had revealed. Because the desire for companionship (or at least the lessening of the pain of loneliness) is universal, even among villains - maybe especially among these villains - we probably love to see it. Want to see it.
On that basis - friendship borne out of empathy - Spinner puts his faith his leader, puts his trust and support, and the rest of the arc is us following the tension of whether he was right to do so. Whether Shigaraki would live up to what Spinner expects of him, whether Spinner will side with Shigaraki despite their earlier conflict. Whether they could become friends, or something like that. And once they do, the consequences of this as things spiral more and more out of control, beyond this arc - that Spinner would know Shigaraki well enough to do something crucial at the turn of a battle later, that Spinner would stick by Shigaraki’s side when he’s in danger, that Spinner is loyal enough to Shigaraki to help him as a friend should.
Through Spinner, we come to see Shigaraki, originally incomprehensible and terrifying, as someone beyond a Villain or a leader, but rather someone valued as a person, a friend, a fellow silly gamer nerd. He’s still scary, of course - just less so, with a seed of doubt of his doom that Spinner - and only Spinner, by virtue of his specific narrative and emotional role in this arc - planted in their characters and the story.
It’s because of Spinner that MVA works, by itself, and as a stepping stone towards the rest of the series. So he really needs to be everything he is, was, and more in the anime adaption please BONES oh my god please
#long post#nalslastworkingbraincell#shigaraki tomura#bnha#mha#heroaca#Spinner#Iguchi Shuuichi#my interpretation of course#but like#everything I said is right there in the text and can be convincingly argued for#so I’m right and it’s mandatory that BONES listens to me
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The following commentary was written by @tenyai, concept and storyboard artist for Hisirdoux Casperan on Wizards: Tales of Arcadia, in response to my meta on the closing scene of Wizards 107.Killahead Part 1 (link here):
Great analysis! You’re right on point!! I had the pleasure of boarding this scene and I’m so glad you picked up on a lot of the symbolism here. You’ll also notice Douxie, despite being told there is nothing that can be done, tells Jim that they will find a way to reverse his ailment.
It’s a huge part of who he is that even in this moment where he as to abide by Merlin’s orders he is still fighting for what he believes in, the need to fight relentlessly to save a life. He makes a promise he has full intention to keep, but it’s the very opposite of what Merlin would have done.
Other fun things to notice in this scene is the staging. You’ll notice Douxie is backed by the turning gears and green light of the Heart of Avalon. I staged him there because the chaotic spinning of the gears alluded to his chaotic turmoil emotionally and internally. And the green light symbolizes Merlin. Together the gears and the lighting are Merlin’s words and his way pressing down on Douxie’s soldiers and his conscience.
As contrast, Claire is backed by the square, rigid lines of the castle wall. She is rigid and is desperately pulling him towards what she believes is stability or something that can guarantee his survival. You’ll also notice directionality here. Left symbolizes staying in the past and going right means returning to the present. You’ll notice Claire pulls Jim leftward, and Douxie pulls him right.
But one key moment is the hand clasp (also the profile shot) where you are neither looking left (where Claire pulled him towards the past) nor are you looking right (at the Heart of Avalon). You look center, and this center symbolizes Douxie fighting for a third option. It is neither left (disruption of time, altered life by staying in the past) and it is neither right (returning to the present/certain doom). He is promising that he will help them find a way to save Jim, and to trust him.
That’s why that dialogue is specifically staged over those shots, and the hand clasp at that angle. In the boards, I actually had his bracer hand up, so you saw the blue light of his magic which was also symbolic of Douxie finding a third option, but they just had his right hand in the final (shucks!!! My symbolism!!).
If you also look closely at the composition you’ll also notice Claire and Jim are separated by the Bg elements, wall vs sky. And when Jim turns to tell Claire the news... You guessed it, he’s backed by the green rotating gears representative of Merlin. He is breaking to her the messed up reality that Merlin forewarned him of.
Anywhere you see those gears and the green, it’s the weight of this decision pressing on the characters. And you already remarked on the end of the scene where Douxie takes accountability for his action. The staging there follows everything I just described as well, as does the lighting!!
Anyway, fun little tidbits for you! That was a super fun scene to craft, a lot of visual language and symbolism in there, all reinforcing and emphasizing the emotional state of the characters and their struggles :)
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Teny, having the person behind the story telling me exactly the kind of symbolism she intended in a scene is just... absolute gold. I love symbolism and parallelism and how narrative, characterization, and meaning are all supported by every tool in the visual narrative box. And as a fan-turning-pro, I’m still learning a LOT and commentary like this helps me see just how much care and thought went into this show, and validates the gut reaction all us fans have had about how narratively masterful Wizards (and the TOA universe) really is.
Like the directional symbolism! That blew my mind! Cuz in the end, we have Douxie leading them rightward (to the future), through Merlin’s green light, but guided fundamentally by his own staff’s blue and thus his own conscience. Also I wonder if the stable arcs behind Doux in that last GIF are a mirror to the unstable ones of Merlin’s Heart of Avalon––a way of pointing out that although Douxie is following the pattern set by Merlin’s shifting moral compass, he’s still holding to Claire’s stability. Using Merlin’s magic, but with his more constant, noble morality. (And going off that, these arcs mirror each other by cascading upward in opposite directions––Merlin’s arcs rising to the right and to the future, and Doux’s rising to the left and to the past, or Claire’s moral standard.)
Also the fact that Merlin’s Avalon arcs rotate downward in such a way that they cut through/push down on Douxie’s head, with an especially high-contrast panel––Unlike when he’s making the promise, in which the Heart of Avalon fades just a tad into the background and doesn’t rotate down on him so much as around him. In framing Douxie against the Heart, the shots move from a Medium Full Shot to a Medium Closeup and finally to a Closeup when he makes the promise––making him slowly larger against Merlin’s Heart of Avalon, his own morality against Merlin’s philosophy. Exquisite combination of prop design, lighting, shots, and narrative symbolism.
And the lighting you mentioned!! Jim’s is red, Merlin’s green, Douxie's blue. Claire’s is purple, but here it’s also the natural, human light of the doorway she’s trying to draw Jim towards. And like you said, Jim choosing Merlin’s path puts him in the backdrop of the Heart of Avalon, bringing Claire into that moral space too. Now this sweet Jlaire moment is heightened by tension just knowing this symbolism!!!
I always loved the interplay of Merlin’s green magic with Douxie’s hair, and knowing your intentional purpose in clashing them makes me all the more excited for scenes like the one before Charlemagne destroys the staff, because the green in Doux’s hair is almost as strong as the blue––showing how much he doesn’t want to let go of Merlin, and how much his staff and his presence is overwhelming his own sense of self and confidence.
Thank you, Teny, for sharing your incredible thought process behind this pivotal scene and letting us know the kind of visual narrative techniques you’ve used to bring out the drama and poignancy of everyone involved. Your love for these characters and this show is truly inspiring. I’ve just started my animation degree at San Jose State University and interactions like yours inspires me to know that the kind of professional I want to be is out there making art, being a storyteller, nerding out, and being awesome. Thanks again!
all gifs are mine
#douxie#tales of arcadia#tales of arcadia wizards#tales of arcadia analysis#hisirdoux casperan#toa wizards#toa wizards spoilers#toa meta#toa wizards meta#tenyai#toa wizards symbolism#*#*mine#*mymeta#*mygifs#toa wizards analysis#analysis#tales of arcadia wizards analysis
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I wanted to touch on the whole gutsca thing with someone (I know zero people in this fandom so you're my lucky pick!). Am I alone in feeling like their first time together came out of no where? My meta with Guts is that he was not at all comfortable with sex at that time of his life (this instance being his first time [outside of the rape he experienced as a child]). His choice of words too, "here I go", translated to me like someone only doing what they felt was expected of them rather than something he was yearning for. He clearly wasn't even ready given how rough he was and how he regressed and attacked her. This moment seemed very forced and almost rang to me like Kentaro's declaration of "no homo though". I would be curious to know how Kentaro felt about homosexuality (bisexuality, etc) and if he ever addressed the ever blatant gay tension and romantic-non-platonic-love blossoming between Guts and Griffith pre-eclipse. I do get the sense that this may be a case of severe queer baiting or perhaps a PSA against gay love altogether ("falling for a man will literally destroy you and send you and everyone you love to hell" type of message); but I'm a very jaded person so I hope to be proven wrong. Sigh, my point being Gutsca seems pretty dang forced and empty of true development. I buy them more as besties than anything romantic. Especially since both he and Casca are actually in love with Griffith (what a fucking triangle!). Does anyone in fandom have any opinions on the sad possibility of this whole beautiful and ultimately tragic love between Griffith and Guts actually being a fucked up anti-gay PSA? Are there any interviews with Kentaro shooting this theory down so I can stop being sad and bitter about it? What are your thoughts?
Thanks for sending this, I'm definitely down to talk about it! I hope you connect with more people in the fandom but don’t worry about sending random asks even if you do lol.
Anyway you’re definitely not alone. I have a lot of thoughts on Guts and Casca's hook up, and they're all pretty much "it feels really forced and not particularly romantic but I think you can argue that that's deliberate" lol. For instance I discuss in a lot of detail here how various aspects of the scene indicate that Guts and Casca having sex is shown to be a case of both of them rebounding from Griffith and sort of giving to each other what they were unable or failed to give to him.
And I talk a lot about how Judeau essentially orchestrates it all and what that suggests about Guts and Casca's relationship here.
And lol sorry for all the links but also this post is about how their relationship feels one-sided to an extent and is used to illuminate a lot of Guts' flaws, using Judeau as a comparison point.
Oh shit and also one more lol, here's a comparison between the sex scene and Griffith's with Charlotte that suggests that both start as ways for the dudes to repress their feelings.
(Don't feel obligated to read all those posts if you don't want, you should get the gist of what I'm saying w/ those descriptions.)
But yeah basically I do think that Guts and Casca getting together felt forced and awkward. At best it might be intended to be seen that way, as two friends hooking up awkwardly in an emotionally intense moment but probably doomed to failure because neither of them are ready for a relationship with the other, or particularly interested in one deep down, once they finished "licking wounds." At worst it’s just bad writing lol. But again like I think there are good arguments for the former.
I also totally agree that their relationship has a strong vibe of doing what's expected. Like for real, at least to me both Guts and Casca read so easily as gay and repressed lol. Casca talks about her feelings for Griffith in terms of “he was a boy she was a girl can I make it any more obvious”
and I can’t help but see it as Casca like, wow I have strong feelings towards Griffith, he’s a man and I’m a woman, so clearly these feelings must be romantic, there’s no other option. Then when she has sex with Guts she keeps contextualizing it essentially as repayment for Guts saving her, like she owes him. “I too want a wound I can say you gave me.” “Not just being given to... maybe I can give something as well.” Which just doesn’t make her desire for him look all that genuine lol.
And then you have Guts. The way he tells Casca that from the start only her touch was okay with him after he has sex with her, referencing the scene when he wakes up with her on top of him and starts to panic before realizing she’s a woman, is soooo suggestive of repression to me. Like, first off because it’s incorrect, he was also okay with Griffith going in for a face-grab after winning a duel Guts had been projecting his rape trauma all over, which seems like a pretty conspicuous omission. And secondly because the reason he was okay with Casca’s touch specifically is solely because she’s a woman, not because she’s special or because they have a magic romantic connection - it’s because she’s not a man. To me that just screams that Guts was open to sex with Casca because she’s the only woman he knows, and he’s afraid of the idea of physical intimacy with men, regardless of what he might actually want deep down.
So yeah that’s basically how I feel about Guts and Casca’s relationship, strong agree with you.
When it comes to Miura’s intent, I can tell you that Miura was asked about the subtext in an interview once, back in 2000, and he responded with something along the lines of ‘two men can have passionate feelings for each other without it being romantic.’ The interview is here, but this is a paraphrase the translator mentioned in the comments.
Other than that I’ve never seen him address it directly, but on the flipside he has cited several textually gay stories as inspiration (off the top of my head: Kaze to Ki no Uta, Devilman, Guin Saga, mangaka Moto Hagio in general), and he has straightforwardly said that the (magical intersex) central character of his other work, Duranki, was intended to have romances with both male and female love interests. Also people tell me there are strong griffguts vibes with the main, presumably canon or intended-to-be-canon ship there. So there’s that lol.
As for the no homo aspect and the potential homophobia in the griffguts subtext... I can’t deny I’ve also considered the idea that it’s a deliberate anti-gay PSA (though I haven’t seen anyone else address the idea as far as I remember, and I’ve only briefly mentioned it offhandedly). Like, Guts and Griffith’s relationship turns bad because they’re both too invested in each other, maybe the barely-subtextual desire is meant to look like a sinister twisting of pure platonic feelings that ruins everything, if Griffith hadn’t loved him the Eclipse never would have happened, etc.
But honestly I don’t think that reading holds up compared to a much more positive reading of their feelings, in which it’s their failure to understand them and act on them, thanks largely to formative childhood trauma and self-hatred, that leads to tragedy.
I don’t know what Miura intended, and there certainly are aspects of the story that are homophobic regardless of his intent, even if my best-faith reading is entirely correct, like the only textual gay attraction being pedophiles and over the top heretic orgies lol, or yk, Guts and Griffith both assaulting the same woman while looking at/thinking about the other in a very sexually charged way.
But the reading of their relationship where it’s positive and good for both of them, even including sexual desire, and only gets fucked up because they both incorrectly think their feelings are unrequited is legitimately so weirdly strong, much stronger than a reading where the sexual nature of their feelings is what fucks everything up, so I’m pretty happy just rolling with that take.
And as much as Casca can be seen and may very well be intended as a no homo, it’s also very easy for me to read her relationships with both as less of a hopeful opportunity for positive heterosexual romance and more of a “here’s how repressing your feelings thru attempts at heterosexuality fucks you up” PSA lol. Griffith and Charlotte too, for that matter. It’s definitely a stretch to think that’s intended, but whether it’s intended or not it’s an easy sell for me and I’m fine with not really worrying too much about possible authorial intent there.
Finally, I also want to link this post that goes pretty thoroughly into why I interpret griffguts as very positive rather than as a cautionary tale or predatory gay lust etc
And also have this shorter post about Femto on the same subject too, why not
Oh and maybe this thing where I split hairs about Guts’ lust for Griffith and desire for revenge to make a point that the homoeroticism isn’t necessarily being equated with violence by the narrative lol
#ask#a#b#anonymous#theme: repression#theme: homoeroticism#interviews#ship: griffguts#ship: gtsca#theme: homophobia#theme: heteronormativity
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The semantic logic of AMVs
I finally finished the post I promised to @katebushstandean , so here's my contribution to the blossoming field of spn amv studies.
In this post I made about fanworks and intertextuality, I argued that AMVs can be referred to as a "discourse between discourses." What I meant by that (and I elaborated on this in the post) can be summarized in this argument structure:
(1) AMVs are typically a dialogue/discourse between a song and a show/film.
(2) A song is already a discourse of its own (i.e. it's the dialogue between music and lyrics).
(2) A show/film is already a discourse of its own (i.e. it's the dialogue between the visual and auditory elements of the show/film).
(C) Therefore, AMVs are typically a discourse between discourses.
I want to push this argument even further and argue for a more generalized theory of meaning that should (ideally) be applicable to any piece of media.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Let's start by analyzing at least just one medium at a time. Take music, for example. Without lyrics, how does music convey meaning at all? Now, I won't go too much into either music theory or the psychology/sociology of music (since I don't think I'll be able to give these subjects any justice anyway), but I want us to look at music more structurally/linguistically. (I am certainly not a linguist, but I am a training logician and I think it would be interesting to extract the logical/semantic relations that occur in music if we treat it as a "text".)
If we want to break down music into its smallest possible units of meaning (the same way we break down language into morphemes in morphology), then we would probably end up with notes, beats, and chords as our basic units (among other stuff, like timbre). Obviously, we cannot subject music to the same reductionist approach we do with either natural or formal languages (e.g. breaking down language into morphemes/propositions/subject-predicate relations/functions).
This is due to the fact that music doesn't really agree that much with the principle of compositionality—that "the meaning of the whole is a function of the meanings of its parts and their mode of syntactic combination." (If you disagree with Montague semantics, you might even argue that the same is true for natural languages and that only formal languages are truly compositional, but I digress). Generally, there is "more than the sum of its parts" when it comes to music; the meanings of a chord don't solely depend on the meanings of the individual notes that make up the chord.
Anyway, back to music and meaning-making.
Yip Harburg has this interesting quote on songwriting, which Adam Neely references here at this mark (15:29���16:10), a quote he originally got from Ben Levin. The quote says: "Music makes you feel feelings, lyrics make you think thoughts, songs make you feel thoughts." I think this quote best encompasses what I mean when I argue that songs are "discourses" of their own.
But even without the lyrics, music on its own is already "discursive." A single note played once doesn't really "mean" much, in the sense that we can't really gather as much meaning out of it alone. The note's relationships with other musical elements is what opens up the realms of meanings that we can attribute to it. (This concept is explored much better in here.)
The same thing is true with natural languages. Morphemes and words have meanings on their own, sure, but they don't really say that much on their own until you place them in a specific order with other morphemes/words. A single sentence is already a discourse between the units of meaning that compose the sentence.
I have been using the term "discourse" a lot, but what do I mean when I use the term? Without spending too much time explaining my own theory of discourse, let's define a discourse as a "series of discursive units." A discursive unit consists of two parts: a prompt and a response. What's important to know about responses in a discourse is that you won't really be able to fully grasp what they mean without knowing what the prompts are (i.e. what they are responding to).
When I describe song and lyrics as "discourses", what I think I really mean is that they are "discourse-like" (hence the description, "discursive"). The words of a sentence treat each other as their own prompts/responses; they're not as meaningful alone, but when taken together, meaning emerges. The same goes with music.
Taking this to a more macro scale, we can treat each episode of a show as their own discourses, and each episode "responds" to the others in some way. The harmonies, tensions, and contradictions that emerge from the "conversations" between these episodes are what we often respond to when we make fanworks (fanart, fanfics, meta, and the likes).
Generally, there are two kinds of "conversations" that happens within and among pieces of media:
The intra-discursive (the conversations that happen within a single text, like how a show's episodes converse with each other), and;
The inter-discursive (also called the intertextual, or the conversations that happen between different texts).
Now that we have established these terms and concepts, we're FINALLY talking about AMVs.
THE DEAL WITH AMVS
I've already touched upon this in my intertextuality post, but it's worth repeating. What I believe AMVs do is reveal the intra-discursive using the inter-discursive. What this means is that by making the subject text converse with other texts (e.g. by making clips from Supernatural "dialogue" with a song of your choice), you are somehow extracting the implicit discourses present in the original text.
When we talk about fanworks (and transformative works in general), we often talk about it in terms of recontextualization, as well as adding something new that wasn't there in the original text (e.g. fix-its). But a neglected aspect of fanworks that I believe AMVs bring to light is the revelatory power of fanworks, like the way it makes the people (may it be the audience or the original creators) confront the implications and implicit meanings already present in the text.
(Learn more about the semantic logic of AMVs below the cut)
Another interesting thing that AMVs do is that it often makes the subject text subservient to the song. More often than not, it's the show that has to adjust to the song; it's the show that has to be sliced and diced in order to fit the song. This is simultaneously a form of violence and a form of liberation—violent in the sense that goes against authorial intent (with "author" here used loosely to refer to the forces that brought the piece to life, may it be a single person or an entire production team) and liberating in the sense that the latent or supressed narratives are brought to light.
Even before the AMV is done, this discursive process is already made explicit by the act of editing. In most editing softwares, you get to see the timeline of your material and an explicit divide between the audio and the visual elements. The audio stream is already a discourse of its own, and the same goes with the video stream.
When you vertically slice these juxtaposed streams and cut out a portion of it, you now have what I call a "semantic moment" locked in time. We can imagine the audio being divided into these little semantic moments (e.g. the chords, a key change, a shift in dynamics or tempo, etc.) and something similar can be said with the video (e.g. vital scenes in the show). Now, a semantic moment doesn't have to be special or eventful; in fact, most of them aren't. In fact, all of experience is nothing but a series of semantic moments (i.e. moments of extractable meaning).
Now, imagine an AMV playing in front of you right now. Let's represent the audio as a series of semantic moments from A1 to An and do something similar to the video, from V1 to Vn. If we represent the flow of time from left to right, then we can talk abstractly about experiencing an AMV like this:
A1-A2-A3-A4-A5...-An
V1-V2-V3-V4-V5...-An
Every moment of our experience of the AMV can be divided into a series like this. AMVs are art objects that unfold over time: they are temporal, and therefore we cannot immediately access all parts of the semantic "discourse" of the text all at once—we have to wait for them to happen.
Let's say I want to analyze Semantic Moment number 6 because something interesting happens there: the chord suddenly shifts into a minor key while at the same time, the video shows a character turning their back to the camera. Now, there are three possible ways to handle this (none of which are mutually exclusive; we usually perform these modes of analysis simultaneously):
Vertical analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and V6. What meanings are brought up when we take these two elements in conjunction? What associations do we have with minor keys, with people turning around, and how these associations influence the other?
Horizontal analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and its earlier counterparts, A1-A5, or between V6 and V1-V5. Earlier, we have discussed that a single chord or a single word on its own doesn't mean that much; it's their relationships with other elements that bring out their "meaning space." What "narratives" or "metaphorical gestures" are brought upon when you consider these semantic moments as discourses/texts as a whole?
Diagonal analysis - analyzing the discourse between A6 and V1-V5, or between V6 and A1-A5. Here, you make the semantic moment converse with the "history" of its counterpart. What are the events that happened in the earlier parts? For example, knowing that the earlier parts of the song were in major key before the turn-around scene might influence our reading of it. Similarly, knowing that the earlier scenes depict a happy relationship might influence how we read the minor shift.
Again, we often do these analytic slices as quick as possible (and often simultaneously); it's not something that we often do consciously (unless the subject text is actually that dense and difficult). It's instinctual to us to bring up these comparisons and engage with the explicit and implicit discourses of meaning happening with any kind of text we interact with.
Now, here's where it gets more complicated. Unless the AMV in question is just a scene lifted from the show and overlaid with a song, it would usually involve a bunch of cutting and joining between different scenes/episodes. What this means is that you're taking an already temporal object and reassembling it into a new order in time. This means that we might've initially thought of as V1-V2-V3-V4-V5...Vn might actually be V3-V1-V6-V19-V8...Vn or some other permutation.
Again, this process is simultaneously violent and liberating—violent because you are destroying its intended order, and liberating because you are negating the tyranny of linearity and contiguity. What I mean by this is that people tend to focus on the discourse of the semantic moments depending on how close they are in space and time. For example, we might focus on how V1 is in dialogue with V2 and how V2 is in dialogue with V3, but the farther the semantic moments are, the less likely we are to notice their discourse.
What AMV editors do is rebel against the tyranny of this habit and bring into light the connections that might have gone unnoticed without the intervention. We often talk about how certain fanworks are more analytical than transformative (e.g. fanfics that function more as character studies and meta analyses of the source text), and there certainly is a spectrum of this among different genres of fanworks. I believe that AMVs, no matter how transformative they are, cannot help but invoke a certain analyticity in their production and reception.
And that concludes my AMV essay. I'll probably add more to this when I gather more thoughts (like how these three posts are related in some way).
Lemme know if y'all wanna hear more about my theory of discourse or something else related. Support your content creators and reblog!
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The Thief and the Tinker, Part 4: Circles and Cycles
part 3
Part 4
Viren: *smirks and plinks Runaan's coin to Ethari*
Ethari, furious: You throw another Moonshadow at me and I'm gonna lose it.
Circles and Cycles
Angst rating: 8/10
Back to Ethari, because we're not done with him yet. Ethari is soft, but he isn't weak. He won't be a willing pawn for Viren. He loves Runaan to the point of invention, and his devotion is more constant than the moon itself. He'll agree to do what Viren says, and he'll be Very Sad. But his spirit is in no way broken. Viren bribing him with the coins containing his family will only have the opposite effect. It'll give Ethari something to fight for.
We could get Focused Chaos Ethari. We could get Angery Trickster Ethari. We could get Rules, What Rules? Ethari. Let him try to steal the coins, try to break them, try to kill Viren, and be stymied at every turn, until he settles and seems cowed. And then all he does is craft his way out of the problem.
What if we are gifted with Iron Man Elf Ethari, who pretends to build a fake Key for Viren, but meanwhile he's really building a coinbuster with whatever he can get his hands on - primal stones, magically imbued gemstones, stolen artifacts, his own arcanum, his own reputation as the Master Craftsman of the Silvergrove. He'll use almost - almost - anything, to stop Viren and free his family.
Ethari may have to choose between those two things, though. And he's a hero, deep down, just like his family, just like his daughter. If he has to choose, he'll choose to stop Viren and save Xadia. He'll pay the same price as his family has if he must.
He'd let Viren think he was motivated purely by wanting his family back, but Ethari is far too steeped in the illusion and sacrifice for that to be all there is to his motives. It's a so-close-and-yet-so-far thing, how he and Viren almost embody the same ideals. Almost. Ethari would take one look at Viren, who just burnt down his whole Forest, he'd see the biggest threat in Xadia, and he'd say anything to get a chance to stop this juggernaut of destruction from getting his hands on whatever that ultimate power really is, locked behind that missing key. If he has to abandon his people and bawl his eyes out to convince Viren he's in, then he will.
And Viren wouldn't make it easy for him. He knows clever when he sees it. He went through all this trouble to persuade Ethari to work with him. He would need to keep Ethari as off-balance as possible to ensure that he keeps working as he should.
Angsty jewelry, anyone?
Viren giving Ethari his husband in pendant form to remind him what he's working for, when Viren and Ethari both know full well that only dark magic can open the hellcoins. Ethari wearing another pendant of his love, except it's not a metaphor this time. It's literally his love, in a coin around his neck.
Viren would love making Ethari stay close to him of his own free will if he ever hoped to free Runaan. Making people bind themselves to you is a big power flex. Remember that TDP stream future-season teaser note about Bait being in a creepy restraint in a future season?
This card is written on in all-caps, so that really could be "Bait" or "bait," or--knowing this show--both. Viren's been using Runaan as bait for Ethari all along. Putting his coin in a dark magic pendant casing for Ethari to wear would be a great parallel for that. Oh god. Oh man.
Maybe he'll stab the coin's scary casing right through that circle on Ethari's chest, right over his heart, make that Iron Man reference really obvious. Ethari also losing his shirt at some point, for angsty Viren-related reasons? It's more likely than you think. I mean... Ethari is literally involved in both forms of forging at this point. Shirt's gotta come off for uhhhh work reasons. And because he's hot. Because of all the forging. Mmhmm. I mean how else are we finally going to discover what his markings look like this is research I swear
I mentioned that I liked god-tier villains, right? Yeah, this is amazing. I haven't wanted to die and ascend over an idea for quite a while, but Ethari vs Viren in a drawn-out battle of wills would kill me in the best way. Especially since, while it looks like they're essentially fighting for who gets Runaan, they're truly fighting a much larger battle with much higher stakes. They're fighting for the future itself. It's an epic struggle between the Narrative of Strength and the Narrative of Love. And we've seen what happens, over and over, when the Narrative of Strength gets to call the shots.
On a meta note: If Ruthari's story arc isn't a love letter from one trauma survivor to another, and on a broader scope to all survivors who see it, I don't know what is. Sometimes life just chews us up and spits us out and we can't stop it and it breaks us. But sometimes we can reach out and grasp the chance to help each other, even after that, even when it hurts a lot, because we know what it means to be loved, and to love, and to want a safer future for each other and for people we'll never meet. The future is worth standing together for, helping each other back up for, fighting side by side for, even if you can't see how it'll end, or even how to begin. We are stronger together, and sometimes we need to fight for our "together" before we can fight for anything else. And that's worth it, every time.
This is glorious, it's beautiful, it's tragic, it's amazing, it makes me want to dance, it makes me want to scream into the void, it makes me want to slap someone with a semi truck. No, someone specific, don't worry, and he super deserves it.
Because Ethari is going to win. He was always going to win. He's soft, and he's clever, and he hasn't forgotten what love means. It's what he's fighting for. Not power, not control. Love. He doesn't want to dictate Runaan's future or anyone else's. He just wants his husband--and everyone else--to have one at all.
So he's going to win.
What thwarting Viren looks like, I couldn't possibly guess. TDP is no stranger to angst, so there will probably be a high cost involved in outwitting the dark mage. Maybe not everyone can be rescued from the coins. Maybe Ethari will lose his life, or his soul, or his vision, or something else really angsty. Viren could even kill him and resurrect him as a smoky craftsman, or a zombie craftsman, or something equally biddable but horrible. The only thing I'm sure of is that Ethari would never willingly make a working Key of Aaravos Ethari as long as there's a chance Viren could possess it. But I do believe that if he gets the right opportunity while he's busy saving the world from Viren's dark intentions, he'll break his husband's hellcoin open somehow and set him free, even if he has to smile at the devil to do it.
Ethari understands the difference between "you can" and "therefore you should." He might sacrifice his own world to save his husband, but he'd never sacrifice someone else's world. That's one of the Moonshadow cultural limits I've noticed: they accept boundaries when it comes to other people's autonomous rights, especially regarding life and death.
These limits could get pushed. Ethari will be under great duress and emotional strain if he goes through this kind of interaction with Viren. And maybe he will choose some dark things. Everyone else has. But I'm placing all my eggs in the basket labeled "Saved By Love." Either I'm right, or I'll get the best angst omelets in the universe. And I do love omelets. A villain invented them, you know. ;)
Another support for Ethari not making the key for Viren: the real Key exists!
Callum has it right now. The plot doesn't need Ethari's key (yet? ever?), but it does need Ethari to learn what he's made of, to stand up for something, or against something, or both at once. And once he learns what he will and won't do and the universe has rewarded his discovery with the return of his beloved husband then Ethari will be ready to take on whatever else the plot has in mind for him.
Depending on the plan, all of these events could happen in S4, as a setup for even bigger things to follow. Viren's wishes can be thwarted here and the show's overall tension will only continue to rise. It would let Ethari flex yes pls his skills so we know who he is, it would show how driven Viren can be for a long-term goal, it would let Claudia saunter further downwards, it would reveal some human/Moonshadow history, and it would resolve the seasons-long tension regarding Runaan's fate, allowing for the cycle of speculation, feels, angst, and Ruthari fanart to begin again. ;) Viren would need to find another way to pursue his long-term goal. And Callum's Key will get a little more clarity on just how important it is to the fate of the world - which will make everything he does, and everyone he talks to, and anyone who knows what he's carrying, intensely important.
Nyx is gonna steal it isn't she, omg chaos birb
To Viren, Ethari was a main course, meant to be devoured and consumed in his lifelong quest for something that will finally satisfy. But to Ethari, Viren was just empty calories to be passed over in favor of ordering his perennial favorite dish, one more time.
Once Ethari escapes Viren's clutches with as much of his family as he can rescue, Viren may turn back to looking for the real Key, especially if someone's seen it recently. Hunting a kid probably seems easier than hunting a full-grown Moonshadow craftsman who just outsmarted him. okay so maybe Nyx stealing it would be a good thing and save Callum's life
Ethari could go on to help repair the Sunforge, or rebuild the Moonhenge, or work on constructing Moonshadow villages in Katolis if he hasn't been ghosted for abandoning everyone after the forest fire. He might build magical devices for any number of reasons, to help all kinds of characters. Hopefully, wherever he goes, he'll have Runaan with him, in some way, for at least a little while. Cycles be like, and I feel like Runaan will not want to remain still for long, for whatever reason. Does he need revenge, atonement, justice, a new body, to find Rayla, to find Ezran? He'll be back in action as soon as he can, I think.
Okay, but, I'm so soft at the thought of a scene where Runaan and Ethari come before King Ezran. The husbands tried to save their people Runaan's way, the old way, and it only continued to endanger them. Following the cycle, as Moonshadows do, was the wrong move. But the son of the last human Runaan killed reached out with mercy and broke a thousand years of suffering and sorrow and hatred. Ezran did what Runaan couldn't: he saved the Moonshadow elves from total destruction. And that, more than anything else in the world, could soften one very broody assassin's heart toward humans again.
What would Runaan do, if his heart truly changed toward humans? What would he say to Ezran? I could see him struggling for a long moment before dropping to one knee to pledge his heart as he once had to do before the Dragon Throne. He doesn't know any other way but to serve. Ezran, reading the whole room and everyone's feelings before he tells Runaan that No, we don't do that here. That he's free, and free means free. No chains, no oaths. Just trust and friendship. He should get to make his own decisions for a change, even though that can be hard and scary sometimes. Runaan being genuinely scared, because that's too much freedom. But he's not alone. He has Ethari, and Ezran, and Rayla, and Callum, and their people, and their allies. And no matter what else happens, the people of Katolis - elven and human - will find a way forward. Together.
part 5
#tdp#tdp theory#tdp speculation#tdp parallels#tdp angst#heavy angst#viren#ethari#runaan#moonshadow elves#hopepunk#ezran#runaan's super getting a tart of jelly tm
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Please please do write the post about wwx not being dumb/oblivious. Those posts were just funny at first but somehow it's now become accepted fact. Meanwhile whether cql or mdzs wwx is a very competent, savvy protagonist who's actually pretty observant! It's getting pretty tiring to see him reduced to genki oblivous magical girl (not that I don't like those, it's just wwx is not one).
Hey anon!
I do plan on writing a more elaborate meta post exploring what arguments there are in the novel to support my wwx is not dumb/oblivious agenda.
But for now I just want to address one factor I think plays a big part in shaping the fandom’s perception of wwx as oblivious/dumb, regardless of how wwx was actually written in the novel. That is, the creative liberties taken by (or forced onto) the cql production team, which have had in my opinion two consequences: 1) cql does not manage to establish how quick-witted and savvy wwx is, which is compounded by the fact that it chose to play the troublemaker persona straight 2) the fact that wwx and lwj’s relationship is entirely subtext actually ends up making wwx look oblivious (at least to people applying a queer reading/bl-danmei reading to their interactions--people who are obvious to or choose to ignore the subtext certainly wouldn’t come to the same conclusions).
So, the first issue. In the novel, wwx’s intelligence is more of a focal point in the narrative because it is a crucial part of the dramatic irony/tragedy of his death: as a result it cannot help being more important to the themes of the novel. After all, he is ultimately hunted down because of and killed by his inventions. The man created an entirely new field of cultivation! In cql, this is somewhat lost due to the fact that he does not invent modao nor does he create the yin hufu, and his death is more of a suicide than a sacrifice (i am still not over the fact that he throws the yin hufu at the crowd to let them wage war over it? that’s the complete thematic opposite of his death in the novel...).
The novel, as well, is better at establishing that wwx’s antics are generally not because he’s just being a troublemaker, but that they are a way in which he garners information, gets people to act the way he needs them to or misdirect them. For instance, in cql, when lwj destroys wwx’s (well, nhs’s) spring book in the library, wwx looks genuinely pained and affronted--in the novel, it is clearly shown that, when wwx realized lwj intended to bring the spring book to lqr, he intentionally made him angry so that he would destroy the evidence himself. the point of the prank was also to not only get a reaction out of lwj, but also (reading btw the lines) wwx’s way of trying to leave a lasting impression on lwj now that his punishment was over. Differently put, while wwx can do directionless pranks, more often than not, they have an underlying meaning/goal instead of just being for Attention(TM) in general. In contrast, the web series is full of missed opportunities in terms of characterisation, and is so from the very beginning (I find extremely disappointing how they decided to adapt the mo mansion and dafan mountain arcs because of how important they are to establishing wwx’s character for the readers/viewers. Through these arcs, we get acquainted with the way he thinks and deduces information, and how he uses people’s perceptions of him and others to his advantage. If you can only read English, @pumpkinpaix‘s translation of the first few chapters might help get a better sense of the nuances).
I’m not saying that wwx is portrayed as dumb in cql: but that his characterization is a lot more fuzzy and inconsistent, and that his intelligence is utilized mostly when wwx goes into his detective mode. As a result, I do feel like it undermines how analytical wwx is in all aspects of his life, making it easy to see him as, you know, someone who’s, like, half-smart, half-super-dumb.
As for issue #2, part of it boils down to the fact that most of the obstacles to wangxian’s relationship had to be erased due to censorship. There no longer is homophobia/internalized homophobia to motivate moments of denial or internal conflict; there is no longer the phoenix mountain kiss to explain lwj’s reluctance to respond to wwx’s flirting after his rebirth (as I explored in one of my other meta post); there is no longer lwj’s failed confession and lwj’s mistaken belief that wwx knows of his feelings, etc. These vectors of tension help contextualise and explain why it takes so long for wwx to realize lwj’s feelings towards him (but let’s not forget that he does: after jinlintai, he starts to realize that lwj treats him especially well, which becomes a certainty after the second siege). the cql production team had no choice but to take these elements away.
that being said, by adding new or by changing moments to support the subtext and to please (bl-danmei) fans, the show actually takes away even more vectors of tension/misunderstanding between wwx and lwj, and makes wwx’s crush seem even more obvious and straight-forward. Take for instance the mo mansion arc. In the novel, wwx sees the Lan disciples’ white robes and has this moment of reflection that he recognizes the robes, and sees danger in the fact that the Lan sect is involved, thinking he should leave but knowing he can’t until he resolves the curse. in cql, we get a slow-pan flash-back of wwx’s first encounter with lwj, leaving him clearly emotional. The novel sets up the association as: white robes -> Lan Sect (subtext, Lan Zhan) -> orthodox/sticklers to rules/people i’ve met in my previous life who disapproved of modao -> danger! In cql, we have instead: whites robes -> Lan Zhan -> emotional reaction/I miss him. That fact is further driven home when wwx starts playing wuji on a blade of grass, ending with a soulfully whispered “lan zhan”. In terms of subtext, it sure lays it on thick: wwx does look like he has a big crush on lwj! But that destroys a big source of tension between them at the beginning: when wwx is summoned into mxy’s body, he thinks lwj hates him and disapproves of his methods and wants to bring him to gusu to punish him. That’s why he wants to run away at first, why he doesn’t disclose his identity to him and why it takes him a moment to understand lwj’s intentions. cql does not do a great job of setting that up. And the changes they make to the events of wwx’s first life, including changes to the timeline through which we are introduced to what happened in the past, makes it even more difficult to see how wwx could have misunderstood lwj’s intentions or his own feelings (again, in a queer or danmei-bl reading of the subtext). They go on a mission together! Spend a lot of time working together toward a similar goal!Lwj calls him his zhiji (”soulmate” as is often translated)! Lwj literally tries to save him from dying! The last thing wwx would remember when he wakes up in mxy’s body would be lwj holding onto his hand and screaming his name when he let go! Again, it does great for the subtext--but it makes it really difficult to understand why wwx would misunderstand lwj’s intentions and feelings, and it makes his own feelings toward lwj seem quite obvious.
Overall, the changes in the themes, genre, events, narrative timeline, characterisation and much more in adapting mdzs into cql have been an important influence explaining why the fandom has this vision of wwx as dumb/oblivious. It reminds me of the way some people on tumblr like to talk about Mr. Darcy as “shy” and “awkward” based on the movie pride and prejudice 2005, which totally misses the point of Mr Darcy and his character as portrayed by Jane Austen--but, if people have only or mainly engaged with this specific adaptation, it is not necessarily surprising that they hold this frankly misguided interpretation due to the choices made by the film production team.
In contrast, in the novel, we are shown a lot to help us understand why wwx comes to the wrong conclusions or might not understand his own feelings and reactions. But that’s for all for another post!
#Anonymous#mdzs meta#or mdzs rant? it's not very coherent for meta#my agenda: wwx is not dumb#cql#excuse my english i don't feel like editing this post yet#okay some minor edits done to make it more readable but more edits might follow
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POV Case Study – Have Some Writing Meta
Point of View (POV) is an integral piece of the storytelling puzzle for Opus, my main body of fic, so I thought I’d do a meta post that walks through how I use it as a narrative tool. The intention is not to tell anyone how they should or shouldn’t use POV, but rather to demonstrate one way I used it very deliberately to create narrative tension, weave in characterization, and develop an overarching theme.
Your POV character is an enormous tool in your writing toolbox, whether you are using a single POV or multiple. How you use it depends on a lot of things: what person you’re writing in (first, second, third), the type POV you’re going with (omniscient, meaning the POV narrator can see into everyone’s heads, or limited, meaning you only have access into the head of a specific POV character).
My preferred writing style is 3rd person “in-your-face” limited POV, that puts the reader so solidly in the POV character’s head it’s almost like 1st person in a 3rd person trench coat. That coupled with present tense gives me some extra intensity that I love taking advantage of in emotional or climactic scenes. Again, this isn’t to state a right or a wrong way to use tense or POV – there are lots of great ways to use these tools – but for the purpose of this exercise, this is my chosen loadout.
I made the conscious decision early in Sonata that I did not want to use Sam Shepard’s POV, ever. Every story in his series would be told through the eyes of the people around him. Why? Because one of the key character traits of Sam is that he makes himself whatever someone needs him to be. He sees himself as a tool, so to be a useful tool, he has to have the right shape for the job. This raises the question: who is Sam, when he is free to just be himself? I’m not sure even Sam knows the answer to that question, so to reinforce it through storytelling, I never wanted to reader to see what goes on in his head. Everything you learn about Sam comes through the perceptions of others, and to show the reader how differently he is perceived by others, I write with multiple POVs rather than just Kaidan’s.
Below the cut, I’m going to walk you through a specific example where POV was an essential part of crafting the story I wanted to tell. The chapter in question comes from Fugue, a story I’m writing that explores the aftermath of Alchera. You don’t need to have read Fugue to follow the logic, but if you care to read the chapter, it functions well on its own separate from the rest of the story.
Fugue – This Hole You Left.
This was a very complicated chapter that lived and died by POV choices, and it was extremely difficult to put together. The approach I took was a gamble that (thankfully) worked after much fretting, gnashing of teeth, and help from @pigeontheoneandonly.
This Hole You Left takes place after Sam dies over Alchera. I wanted to paint a ‘kaleidoscope’ of grief, and explore how Sam’s death impacted the people around him in very different ways. Therefore, I needed a plethora of POVs to work with, each one giving me something different. The goals were this:
Find differing POVs that would offer demonstrably different perceptions of Sam and/or illustrate different stages of grief and shock.
Allow each of those POVs to mold to that character’s specific goals and motivations. i.e., I did not want the grief of other characters to be tied to the romantic relationship that had been lost – because that’s not the lens those characters would look through.
Each POV had to move the chronology along in a way that made sense and felt natural.
Kaidan’s POV was off limits. In the absence of Sam’s physical presence, I wanted to treat Kaidan like Sam – the character people could see, but not explore the headspace of. Everything the reader learns about Kaidan in the immediate aftermath of Alchera comes from other people.
That last piece was important. Arguably, Kaidan’s POV was the most valuable one of all, but I was going to have lots of time to explore it in meaningful ways elsewhere. I thought it might be more powerful to express his grief through the eyes of others, and use him as a central theme to weave in and out of the chapter. More about that later.
This constituted one hell of a puzzle to put together, especially when it came to the chronology. For instance, an early mistake I made was putting the most powerful POV (Anderson) too early in the sequence, which diminished what came after it. Moving that POV around meant re-framing other POVs to keep the chronology moving forward (for example, Garrus’ POV initially came after Anderson’s, by moving it before his, I had to change the context so that Anderson’s POV wasn’t a step backwards in time).
Each POV scene was also intended to essentially be its own self-contained short, creating a microcosm of grief, that when put together, would create a much larger and significant whole.
I could write forever about all the trial and error that went into finding the right formula, but it’s probably more valuable to look at where I wound up, and why:
1st POV: Lora Alenko (Kaidan’s mother)
Why: She gave me a window to set the clock in motion and make the loss of the Normandy feel real, because she had the advantage of having no idea anything was wrong. Plus, her perspective felt like a unique one I hadn’t seen in fic when it came to Alchera. I’d set her character up in Sonata, so readers of that fic would be familiar with her and understand what that phone call meant to her in a more meaningful way.
How I used it: I put her in the middle of a mundane, normal, event – lunch with a friend – and then shattered that normalcy with a phone call telling her the ship her son was on had been destroyed. That shift from normal to a state of dread gave me the tension I wanted to use for the rest of the chapter.
Excerpt:
But before she can answer, her omnitool flashes. She frowns and looks down at her arm. It’s a message from Marc. SOS. Call now.
A chill runs down her spine. SOS isn’t something Marc throws around lightly. She’d gotten an SOS from him when he’d found Apollo, the warmblood she’d ridden for years, with a leg stuck through the paddock fence, and the day they’d learned about Vyrnnus.
Kaidan.
“Melia,” she murmurs. “Excuse me, I have to take this.”
2nd POV: Admiral Hackett
Why: Hackett gave me the chance to explore Shepard through the eyes of the Alliance. To them, and to Hackett, he’s a weapon rather than a person. He also gave me a chance to weave in a sense of anger, one of the stages of grief.
How I used it: This POV came about late in the revision process, but I’m thrilled it did, because I was missing that cold, calculated look at Shepard’s importance. Shepard dying fucks up Hackett’s plans and political machinations, and his immediate response is not to mourn someone who died, but to move on to plan B. This also gave me a shot to work in Shepard’s mother. By seeing her in Hackett’s POV, I could reinforce the ongoing theme that Captain Shepard sees her son as a legacy, rather than a person.
Excerpt:
There isn’t a list of people who can replace Shepard. Time to make one. Hackett exhales, gaze falling to the datapad on his desk, Shepard, Sam still displayed at the top of the casualty list.
He picks it up and hurls it at the wall. It cracks, screen flickering to black as it clatters to the floor.
What a goddamned waste.
3rd POV: Joker
Why: Joker was an easy one. I’d set up some rather terrible foreshadowing in Sonata with a scene in which he makes the comment “I’d go down with that ship,” and Sam replies, grinning, “Not while I’m around.” I wanted to spike the ball over the net in Fugue, so parking in Joker’s POV in the immediate aftermath was a no-brainer.
How I used it: Through Joker I could explore guilt and shock, so I went back to that memory from Sonata and used repetition to make Joker feel stuck in that moment. It was also my first chance to weave Kaidan in to reinforce the notion of guilt and lay some neat groundwork for narrative tension that would come to a head later.
Excerpt:
I’d go down with that ship.
Not while I’m around.
He should have abandoned ship. The escape pod was right there. He could have given up the Normandy at any time. All he had to do was step over the bodies of Pressly. Chase. All he had to do was leave them all behind.
Instead he’d stayed, and Shepard had made good on his word.
I’d go down with that ship.
Not while I’m around.
4th POV: Dr. Chakwas
Why: Through her, I could look at the adrenaline and denial that comes with managing trauma. To her, Shepard was a patient. Because she is overwhelmed with patients in the form of the Normandy’s wounded, she cannot stop to think about the one she cannot help: she has a job to do, and she has to do it. There will be time to grieve later.
How I used it: Again, I used Kaidan to emphasize her role as a caretaker. Kaidan, who is in command of the survivors, has a moment of weakness that she cannot afford to have, and he can only afford to have in front of her, because she overrides his authority in a medical emergency. Because we are in her POV, we see her outwardly refuse to crack, when internally she’s hanging by a thread. It made for a nice contrast.
Excerpt:
“There was no transponder signal,” she tells him, saying out loud everything she’s been repeating to herself. “We were in hostile territory, with over twenty injured crew. He was gone, Kaidan.”
His fingers curl, eyes still trained on the window.
She puts a hand to her forehead. Between Virmire, triage on the Citadel and this it’s too much. Before today she’s never felt old. Tears sting the corner of her eyes and she swears under her breath. Not here. Not today. Tears are something for tomorrow. Right now, she has a job to do.
5th POV: Garrus
Why: Garrus was a member of the crew who wasn’t on the ship, which is a completely unique perspective. But the question that took me forever to answer, was, how does he react to Sam’s death? What was Shepard to Garrus? I hadn’t written about them during ME1 yet, he was not part of Sonata, and ME1 Garrus is always a little tricky for me. I knew there was something important to gain from his POV, but I couldn’t figure out what it was to the point of tearing my hair out. Eventually, I settled on Garrus seeing Shepard as a mentor he couldn’t live up to, and made his POV about failure and regret.
How I used it: Shepard was everything Garrus aspired to be, but could never quite achieve. He left the Normandy because Shepard made him feel like he could make a difference, only he didn’t. And then, his friends needed him, and he wasn’t there, and now Shepard is dead. I wove a lot of doubt, regret and self-deprecation into his POV to drive that home.
Excerpt:
Dammit, why hadn’t he stayed on that ship?
He grabs another report from the top of the pile on his desk, which is getting tall enough to sway in the breeze.
This is why. Because Saren had obliterated the Citadel, and Shepard, damn him, had made him believe he could make a difference. He thought he could make it here. Crazy thing, having to fill out a form every time you find a corpse. He’s got three more to add to the list after today.
6th POV: Anderson
Why: Anderson was both a father figure and commanding officer to Sam. Because he’s known him for most of his life, he has a perspective no other POV character has. To him, Sam was more like a son he’d been tasked to protect, and in the end failed to protect him. He and Kaidan are the only people who know Shepard well enough to mourn Sam, and not just Commander Shepard. Anderson would really let me start to explore grief.
How I used it: This was my heavy hitter. Through Anderson’s POV, I could trace Sam the person as he grew into Commander Shepard, and explore the echoes of the kid that still lived in the adult. I was also able to use Kaidan in a really fascinating way. In Opus, Kaidan and Sam served together for four years before the Normandy. Therefore, Anderson is pretty familiar with him, but doesn’t know him the way he does Sam. He keeps looking at Kaidan expecting Sam. In a sense, trying to plug a puzzle piece into the wrong hole. It was a neat way to show Anderson’s grief.
Additionally, this was a great opportunity to demonstrate Kaidan’s sense of loss without being in his head. Anderson does not know there was a relationship between Sam and Kaidan, but the reader does. Thus, I could have my cake and eat it, too: The POV character wasn’t examining the relationship that had been lost between Sam and Kaidan because he didn’t know it existed, but the reader got to.
Excerpt:
He exhales through his nostrils. “The Normandy was attacked by an unknown vessel. Whoever they were, Joker says they came out of nowhere. Shepard got him into the escape pod, but the ship lost gravity. He…well.”
Alenko stares straight ahead, silent. Anderson looks for a tell, but he only knows Shepard’s.
Alenko isn’t Shepard.
7th POV: Tali
Why: Tali presented a similar problem to me that Garrus did. What was Shepard specifically to her, and what did his loss mean to her? As my closing POV, not only did she need to hit a home run, but she also needed to close out the chapter in a way that tied all the other POVs together and examined Shepard’s death through a much wider lens, without feeling like I was pulling the camera back from her POV to get there. That’s a lot to ask. Lucky for me, Tali never lets me down.
The answer I came to also called back to Sonata, in which exploring what home meant to each of the characters was an important theme. So I went back to this idea for Tali, as she and Sam had a very important thing in common that set them apart from everyone else: they were both born in space, and did not have the traditional fixed point of home that everyone around them had. Home was different to them than it was to everyone else.
How I used it: Tali was the only one left who understood how truly unique and special the home she’d found on the Normandy was. Therefore, when the crew starts to fragment and fall apart around her, she is forced to mourn the loss not only of Shepard, who gave her that home, but the home itself. I was able to use that grief to circle back to how much Shepard changed the people around him, and how deeply his loss will be felt in ways people haven’t even realized yet.
That conclusion was the magic final puzzle piece that made the whole thing work, and it was literally the last idea to take shape.
Excerpt:
Aliens don’t carry their ship names with them the way quarians do. Perhaps when you’re born with dirt under your feet you don’t need to. For them, home isn’t a vessel among the stars – it’s a fixed place in the universe, a way back no matter how far from it you venture.
But Shepard had been different. Like the quarians, he had no fixed point. Home was what – or who – he carried with him. He’d understood the power of a ship name, even if he hadn’t used one out loud. People who served with Shepard felt like they belonged, in ways they couldn’t anywhere else, because he said to hell with that fixed point in the galaxy and brought home to anyone who needed it. For Shepard, there wasn’t a way back. Just a way forward.
Shepard changed people.
They’ve lost so much more than a ship.
The primary objective of Opus is to examine the relationship between Sam and Kaidan, but to really understand the magnitude of Sam’s death, it was critical to explore it outside the confines of that relationship. Part of the struggle Sam and Kaidan have is that Sam doesn’t truly belong to himself or to Kaidan – he belongs to everyone else. That means his death doesn’t belong to either him or Kaidan. It’s shared with all the people he touched and shaped.
That’s what made this carousel of POVs a challenge I really wanted to make work. It required an absurd amount of juggling, but the diversity and uniqueness of each made Shepard’s loss feel real and devastating. But not only did each of those POVs tell us something about Sam, they provided some meaningful character development for the POV character. How they react to Sam’s death and what it means to them tells us a lot about that character, which in turn lends the entire story more depth.
If you read this far, I’m pretty sure you deserve a cookie.
I don’t know if any of that is helpful or meaningful other than to show an example of how POVs can be a really awesome tool to tell a story. There can be a lot of depths and layers to why you use a particular character to tell a story through, and those choices can greatly impact the story you end up telling.
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The Allegory of the Tin Man, the Dictator, and the Knight: a Dissection of Ironqrow and a Character Arc of Failure
“There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men who were best of friends. They were so much happier when together that they were seldom apart.”
— L. Frank Baum
A brief Ironqrow meta and character analysis of James Ironwood, the ultimate screw up, in three parts.
I. Qrow and Ironwood’s Homoeroticism in Canon Source Material and its Translation
II. Ironwood’s Repressed Characterization and the Inherent Chivalry of the Dictatorship
III. Ironwood, Alone
Qrow and Ironwood’s Homoeroticism in Canon Source Material and its Translation
Within the Oz series, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow are layered within homoerotic subtext, even if it is included unintentionally. Tison Pugh’s analysis Queer Utopianism and Antisocial Eroticism in L. Frank Baum's Oz Series posits that the land of Oz as portrayed within the series is a largely asexual environment of suspended adolescence that involves the deviation of binary gender norms, and of performative heterosexuality. Pugh refers to it later as a “queer utopia”. Men are portrayed as a lesser military force to women, and heterosexuality is a flimsy presence at best; all signs of procreation within Oz are stifled. While this could be chalked down to Baum not wanting to get into the subject of sex and exploration in a children’s series, it does contribute to a particular tone with real-life critiques of capitalism and a particular deconstruction of gender norms. Ozma, who will become the ruler of Oz after the Wizard and the Scarecrow respectively, for example, is originally a boy named Tip (the name itself holds phallic implications) who is “transformed” into a girl. The strongest military force is one of all-women led by a rebellious female general. Pugh observes, “At the same time that Baum satirizes...women as leaders…he consistently depicts women as more successful soldiers than men, and female troops appear better capable of serving militarily than male troops…[the] male army comprises of twenty-six officers and one private, and they are all cowards…” and cites the Frogman’s declaration that “Girls are the fiercest soldiers of all...they are more brave than men, and they have better nerves”.
RWBY itself isn’t opposed to this kind of subversion, either in its characters or its relationships. There’s an obvious effort to include LGBTQ+ representation (albeit primarily in the background), strong female characters are prevalent and make up most of the main and supporting cast, a character’s gender is not strictly reliant on its source material, and BlackSun, while cute and a valid ship in its own right, is treated as a heterosexual red herring to Bumbleby. Additionally, there have been a lot of hints by the voice actors, writers, and creators on social media that Qrow himself is queer, the infamous Ironqrow embrace included.
Admittedly, if I wanted to write an essay about the likelihood of Qrow being LGBTQ+ or having some kind of queer identity, I would probably focus more on his relationship with Clover, which had a lot more overt and probably canonically intentional Gay Vibes, and despite having known Qrow nowhere near as long as Ironwood has, it has just as much, if not more, to extrapolate. Unfortunately, that’s not the main point of this essay, although it remains relevant. While I personally don’t doubt that Qrow has had sex with women or experiences valid sexual attraction to them, I get the feeling that it is, to a degree, a performative act and a masculine assertation of enjoyment intended as a coping mechanism. It plays into the trope of the handsome, tortured alcoholic (best exemplified, perhaps, in the MCU’s Tony Stark, Dean Winchester in Supernatural, and critiqued in the superhero episode of Rick and Morty) who sleeps around just to recall the feeling of intimacy, or because he associates sexual ‘degradation’ as a reflection of his worth. Real self-deprecating, slightly misogynistic stuff. Qrow’s recall of short skirts, as well as his brief exchange with the waitress in an earlier volume, reminds me of one specific interaction between the Scarecrow and his own love interest. Within the series, the Qrow’s source-material counterpart, the Scarecrow, has one canonical love interest, the Patchwork Girl:
“Forgive me for staring so rudely,” said the Scarecrow, “but you are the most beautiful sight my eyes have ever beheld.”
“That is a high compliment from one who is himself so beautiful,” murmured Scraps, casting down her suspender-button eyes by lowering her head.
Pugh points out that the two of them never develop this relationship further than flirtation, and heterosexuality is reduced to a “spectral presence” lacking the “erotic energy [driving] these queer narratives in their presence”. Specifically, Qrow never reveals a serious or long running heterosexual love interest - he is not the father! [of Ruby] (despite much speculation that he and Summer Rose were involved) and he and Winter never really moved past the stage of ‘hostility with just a hint of sexual tension’ - and there is no debunking of potential queerness. His interactions with Clover (deserving of an entire essay on its own) seem to support this interpretation, and is more or less a confirmation of some kind of queer inclination or identity. Again, the “queer utopia” of Oz comes at the cost of the expulsion of the sexual or the mere mention of reproduction - still, through this device, same-sex relationships gain a new kind of significance with the diminishing nature of heterosexuality. Speaking of queer narratives, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man have the most tender and prolonged relationship of perhaps all the characters in the series, exchanging a lifelong commitment:
“I shall return with my friend the Tin Woodman,” said the stuffed one seriously. “We have decided never to be parted in the future.”
Within the source material, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow voluntarily live together, and are life partners in nearly every sense of the word. The second book in the Oz series is The Tin Woodman of Oz. In summary, the Tin Woodman recalls that he had a fiancée before the events of the first book, forgot all about her, and now must search her out so that they can get married. Who does he ask to accompany him in this pursuit? None other than his no-homo life partner, the Scarecrow. Although this sounds like a stereotypical heteronormative storyline, “this utopian wonderland...rejects heterosexual procreation...First, the Tin Woodman does not desire...Nimmie Amee...” and even acknowledges that due to the ‘nature’ of the heart that the Wizard had given him, he is literally incapable of romantically or passionately loving or desiring Nimmie, and by extent, women in general - to me, that works perfectly as an allegory for a gay man who is literally incapable of experiencing legitimate heterosexual urges, but ‘soldiers on’ out of obligation and societally enforced chivalry. “The Tin Woodman excuses himself from the heteronormative imperative...Only his sense of masculine honor, rather than a heteronomratively masculine sex drive, impels the Tin Woodman on his quest to marry his long-lost fiancée.” Again, Ironwood’s character follows the lines of propriety within the sphere of the wealthy elite, and his persona as a high-ranking military man and politician, as well as the conservative values instilled within Atlas, prioritize duty and obligation. This kind of culture is stifling and in a lot of ways aloof, as the upper class deludes itself into believing that it is objectively better and more advanced than its neighboring territories. *ahem the myth of American exceptionalism ahem*
“There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men who were best of friends. They were so much happier when together that they were seldom apart.”
I think it’s funny that the characters that Ironwood and Qrow are based off of are canonically the closest of friends, who coexist almost as a unit. In contrast, the first introduction we get of Ironwood and Qrow is a hostile exchange where they’re at each other’s throats, never on the same page, and never in sync, not when it matters. Indeed, Qrow snaps at Ironwood for his lack of communication, which is a recurring issue between the two of them on notable occasions. If the source material is anything to go by, there should be a significant relationship between the two of them, or at least some kind of connection, even if it goes unspoken or unacknowledged. To be fair, in RWBY’s canon, I think there is.
I’ve seen this joke that while Qrow hates the Atlas military, the only people he really seems to flirt with is Atlas military personnel. “Ice Queen” is something I interpreted to be partially hostile, partially mocking, and partially flirtatious, in equal spades - the voice actors and creators have indicated that it was flirtatious, and there was a whole Chibi episode dedicated to the concept of Qrow and Winter’s extrapolated sexual tension, albeit in jest. I might argue that his use of abbreviates aren’t reserved for people he dislikes, but for people who bring out his playful side. “Brat”, “Pipsqueak”, “Firecracker”, and “Kiddos” are all drawn from a place of affection, however short or mocking it may seem, because that’s what crows do: they mock others.
Qrow has little nicknames for people; while it’s not exclusively a sign of affection, I do get the feeling that ‘Jimmy’ is an informality that irks Ironwood, but can also be interpreted as Qrow giving James what he needs, rather than what he wants.
Glynda is by no means a pushover, but in assuring him that while he does questionable things, he’s still a good person, she’s softening the blow and probably further enabling deeply rooted and pre-existing traits, many of which contribute to his problematic control complex. It is established early on that Qrow resents the military (as he should), and it is implied that he’s spent a fair amount of encounters harassing and provoking military personnel (Winter being the most evident example of this), and has insulted the military numerous times to Ironwood’s face. He lectures Ironwood about the way he conducts his operations, his inability to communicate, and basically what a complete, inconsiderate asshole he really is.
What Ironwood needs is someone who operates outside of the pretense that he works, breathes, and lives under, and just tells it like it is. Jimmy isn’t all that - he’s a person, just like the rest of us, and he can flaunt all the titles that he wants, but James stripped down is still just Jimmy.
Qrow also is the kind of person who pries, who is insistent, and not particularly sensitive. For someone like Ironwood who has a lot of (physical and emotional) barriers, logically, in order for him to receive genuine understanding, Qrow fits the profile of someone who is invasive but not exploitive, who sees past the cracks in his armor and takes him for what he is. What is just important is that whoever Ironwood is with is someone who makes him want to try not only to be better, but to be real; thematically, General Ironwood seems to have a great respect for but a deep struggle with authenticity. He clearly resents the ignorance and frivolity of Atlas’s wealthy elite, as evidenced by his support for Weiss at the dinner party in announcing that “she’s one of the only people making any sense around here”, while struggling to project the facade that he’s carefully created.
See, we don’t have evidence that there is something going on between Ironqood and Qrow so much as we have enough evidence to inconclusively say that there’s not not something going on. I think there’s enough evidence to support the idea that something could be going on, or was going on.
When Qrow saves Ironwood at the Battle of Beacon, who is under the false impression that Qrow believes him to be the culprit of the attacks, his eyes follow Qrow and we get a closer shot of his awed expression; we the viewer can only imagine what he sees as Qrow arcs through the air and slices down a Grimm from behind his back. The focus on Ironwood’s expression portrays something like shock (so Qrow wasn’t trying to attack me after all, but then what the hell is he doing?), maybe wonder (I can’t take my eyes off of him, I can’t look away), maybe respect (I know he’s a good Hunter, but I’ve rarely seen him in action), but it is unfiltered nonetheless. In a show where fight scenes are vital to the progression of the story itself, the dynamics of these fights are at their best when they are character driven, whether it is revealing or reinforcing something about the characters and their relationships, or it is deciding their fates. There’s something to be said about characters being given moments together in battles, and what that says about the significance of their relationship. The best example of this might be the battle between Blake and Yang vs Adam; it served to give Adam what he deserved, help Blake and Yang reach closure in certain aspects of their own trauma, and solidify the bond between the girls. Similarly, Qrow and Ironwood’s moment is meant to reveal a theme that will later be revisited in volume 7; trust. Ironwood is startled but not shocked when he believes that Qrow distrusts him to the degree of attacking him, and is ready to attack or defend as needed.
Qrow tells him what he needs to hear, more or less: YOU’RE A DUMBASS. Ironwood is, indeed, a dumbass. While he does extend the olive branch of trust and good will to CRWBY and co. this trust is highly conditional and proves to be, while from a place of desperation and sincerity, at least partially performative.
When Ironwood snaps, he snaps hard.
Amber’s voice actress tweeted early on, joking that Qrow has two Atlas boyfriends, and Arryn has made comments, too. It’s one of the older ships, and the crew is certainly aware of it (“...extended chest bump...”).
Kerry has stated that he finds the Ironqrow relationship interesting, and wishes it had been explored more (additionally, allegedly lobbying that Ironwood’s arm in the Ironqrow hug scene be slightly lower). I’m not saying that they’re going to both make it out alive, or canon, or even that romantic subtext was intentionally woven into the script. All I’m saying is that I think their relationship is interesting too, especially when the subtext of their source material relationship is taken into context, and the way their characters are positioned is suggestive of some sort of compatibility, even if it is a hit or miss kind of opportunity, and I have the sinking suspicion that it was missed on both accounts.
The Tin Woodman of Oz concludes,
“All this having been happily arranged, the Tin Woodman returned to his tin castle, and his chosen comrade, the Scarecrow, accompanied him on the way. The two friends were sure to pass many pleasant hours together in talking over their recent adventures, for as they neither ate nor slept they found their greatest amusement in conversation.”
Ironwood’s Repressed Characterization and the Inherent Chivalry of the Dictatorship
“I don’t give a damn about Jacque Schnee...what about the other two? Do not return to this office until you have Qrow Branwen in custody.”
“And that’s not all we’ve lost...I had Qrow in my hands, and I didn’t do what needed to be done.”
Observe: Ironwood, at this point, does not care about politics. I doubt he’s ever wanted to, or ever liked it (if his tired outburst at the dinner party is any indication) but his Knightly qualities (we’ll get to that) have, up till this point, prompted him to adhere to them for both power and etiquette. James surrounds himself in a world that he understands and despises; more than anything, he’d like to be a general, a commander, and the Knight in Shining Armor archetype, because warfare is something he understands. It is a testament to his (superhuman) willpower that he forces himself to become fluent in the language of politics, and to live and breathe in it. To clarify, Ironwood sees himself as a man who does what needs to be done; if he wants to change and control Atlas, he will have to involve himself in its politics.
Likely, his resilience has contributed to the way he views himself and what he deserves, as someone long-suffering and almost martyr-like, a silent hero doing what needs to be done. But at the moment, he’s lost his goddamn mind coming undone. He’s murdered and jailed his political dissent (and might have considered executing prisoners), but at this point, that’s all that Jacque and Robyn are to him. First he dismisses Jacque, narrows it down to the two escaped prisoners, and finally reveals what’s really on the forefront of his mind: Qrow, free and out of his hands.
[ When recalling this dialogue, please do so while imagining a bad recorder cover of the Titanic music playing over the background. Here is a sample. ]
In the most recent episode, Ironwood seems to have gone off the rails even further. The fact that Winter, his most faithful lieutenant, is losing her unshakable faith in him, says a lot about how hard he’s fallen off the deep end. In Winter’s mind, I think that she sees him almost as a surrogate father figure, or at least a patriarch who can be positively compared to Jacques in every way. The previous volumes go to lengths to compare the two as adversaries and showing James in a favorable light; Winter is in her own personal horror right now, because she is beginning to understand that Ironwood is a man who may not be her father but is just as susceptible to corruption, and may have been that kind of person all along. Skipping over the...ah, genocidal tendencies, and the fact that he’s proposing to kidnap Penny’s friends to force her to obey him and likely is starting to realize that Winter is the perfect bait (let’s just say that “Ironwood is not good with kids” is the understatement of the year) Ironwood wants Qrow back (in captivity), I think that it’s significant that while Ironwood registers that Robyn is gone as well, his first priority is Qrow, probably for two reasons. On one hand, he still refers to Qrow by his first name, instead of the formal Branwen. Of course, that doesn’t have to mean anything at all. They’re colleagues within the same age range, both members of the same secret brotherhood and similiar skill sets.
On the other hand, it reminds me of the moment when Qrow and the kids first fly into Atlas, and they see the heightened security, and Qrow mutters, “James...what have you been doing,” under his breath, sounding concerned, apprehensive. He’s not addressing the kids, he’s talking to himself; he regards James much more seriously both as a potential threat and a friend than he’d rather the other know, and I think that James’ focus on Qrow at this point is similiar, only not only is this a sign of them knowing each other well, but of Ironwood’s slipping control. He offered Qrow his trust and camaraderie, his last attempt to keep a handle on his humanity (or, his heart). Qrow, in return, withheld vital information, got close with another operative instead, then allegedly killed him and and escaped ‘rightful’ imprisonment.
The Tin Man is offering Qrow his heart, at least proof of it, and the Scarecrow [and co.] steps back to observe the situation, and assesses that no, what you are going to do is wrong, and I cannot agree with it.
Ironwood is not an objective person, as much as he wants to be. He’s angry, desperate, scared, and humiliated. Worst of all, he’s rebuffed, and he’s taking Qrow’s escape personally. First, he understands that Qrow is a threat. He’s Ozpin’s best agent, he has years of field experience, and he knows too much, probably more than James knows. Second, they have history.
My personal interpretation of Ironwood is something this:
He’s a sad, sad, lonely bitch. What Ironwood longs for, just like his source material counterpart, is a heart. He will go to any lengths to achieve this, because he believes that he has self awareness and therefore is able to check and balance himself. He treats his subordinates well, is diplomatic, skilled in a variety of trades, fighting the good fight, and longs for the affirmation that yes, he is a good person, and yes, he’s had a heart all along. He just strays from the path, and loses his way.
This is symbolically represented by his partially mechanic exoskeleton; we have no idea how far the cyborg extremities extend, or how deep, but we do get the visual notion of humanity in conflict, or a man’s soul deconstructed and split between the cold efficiency of machinery and the very real warmth of a human body. Ironwood wants to appear human, and benevolent, and genuine, and in return, loved; he is human, and he could be all of these things. If my reliance on the source material holds any merit (although I highly doubt it), then there is also a potential struggle with sexuality, (Glynda herself even explicitly and exasperatedly references a testosterone battle between Ironwood and Qrow, suggesting a regular overassertation of masculinity) and a further incentive to achieve love and subsequent acceptance.
To clarify, I do believe that there were less-than-subtle allusions to Ironwood and Glynda having a vaguely flirtatious history, taking their shared scenes and background dancing into account, but this, again, does not “debunk” the presence of queerness within a narrative; it could be an assumption of heterosexuality, or performative itself, or just not an exclusive interest. Besides, Ironwitch isn’t what this essay is about. I’m not trying to persuade or dissuade someone of the notion that Jimmy is gay, or straight, or something else, only that the potential ambiguity exists. What I do think is most important is that James doesn’t openly ward people away, not when those people aren’t under his command and are technically outside of his jurisdiction. He’s friendly with Glynda, tries to extend trust to Qrow, is kind to people in the aftermath of battle, and overall clings to diplomacy as his first weapon. He wants to be accepted, to be liked, and to be welcomed. This is not an outrageous want, nor is it uncommon. Unfortunately, Ironwood’s understanding of love and acceptance is entangled within the concept of control, and he associates unquestioned compliance with this Want.
Ironwood’s introduction into the series shows him being openly cordial, and very considerate, especially his interactions with Glynda and Ozpin. He’s a gentleman, he’s apologetic, and, as Glynda assures him, he’s a “good man”. She doesn’t really elaborate on what a “good man” is, exactly, but we might presume that a “good man” is a person with good intentions, who strives to do what’s right, regardless of his options.
Here’s the thing - one similarity between Ironwood and the Tin Man is that they both have the capacity to love, but they fool themselves into thinking that they don’t; before the Wizard gives him a ‘heart’, the Tin Man suggests that he is only kind and considerate to everyone in Oz because he believes he needs to overcompensate for what he lacks, and is therefore doubly aware of how he treats others. However, the Wizard knows no real magic, only tricks and illusions, and what he gives the Tin Man is essentially a placebo that enables the Tin Man to act towards and feel about others the exact same as he always had, only with the validation that what he feels is authentic. Similarly, Ironwood has always had the option to be empathetic and not fucking crazy open to collaboration, which he’s very aware of, until his own paranoia cuts into his rationality and compels him to cut himself off from all allies and alternative perspectives. He then uses his difficult position and responsibilities to justify unjustifiable actions, to rationalize irrational urges, and to gaslight and brainwash his subordinates into compliance.
The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything.
“You people with hearts,” he said, “have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful. When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn’t mind so much.”
Qrow sees through this, however, and not only seems incapable of following orders himself, but disrupts the decorum that Ironwood is used to. In return, I think we see a little more of James that he’d like to reveal.
“If you were one of my men, I’d have you shot!”
“If I was one of your men, I’d shoot myself!”
In case this entire ass essay doesn’t make it obvious, I do really ship Ironqrow. I’m open to other pairings, definitely, but this one in particular is just more interesting to me. It feels more revealing, more subtle. I have more questions.
In hindsight, maybe the dialogue example above ^ didn’t age well, considering where they’re at, but I do like how their professional animosity is flavored with a kind of camaraderie, and understanding. This exchange isn’t exactly playful, but they’re taking each other seriously - and, like repressed schoolboys, taking the piss at each other in a childish way, and isn’t that part of the fun of banter, when they’re so focused on each other that they forget to act their age? In a lot of ways, this is a really fun dynamic to watch. They’re opposite-kind-of-people, which I like, at least on a superficial level, and I can easily imagine them tempering each other in ways that would make them ultimately happier people.
They even look well-coordinated, with similar color schemes that lean on the opposite sides of the shared spectrum (white, grays, reds and black); I think the decorative design on Qrow’s new sleeves are supposed to be more ornate simply to communicate that Qrow is committed, and willing to be sentimental, but some viewers have suggested that it resembles the pattern on James’ weapon, Due Process (the revolver is based off of the Tin Man’s pistol, although, curiously, in The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow was the only character to carry a pistol, and the commentaries suggest that the 2007 Tin Man miniseries was the “basis of the allusion”. Does that mean anything? I don’t know. Probably not.). Still, it raises the questions: who was in charge of designing the team’s new clothes and gear? How much input did Atlas get, and was this intentional? Personally, I think that the vine-like pattern on Qrow’s sleeves also bear a resemblance to Ozpin’s staff, a subtle reaffirmation and foreshadowing of his allegiance in contrast to Ironwood, but I digress.
They can also deliver that UST kind of banter that takes up their attention, and get up really close to each other, in each other’s faces, and just be pissed, which I think is very sexy of them, mhm. Enemies to Colleagues to Reluctant Friends to Lovers is a trope that I very much appreciate. Gaining some sort of common ground at the Battle of Beacon only to reunite, tired and battered, after the shit has already hit the fan? Slow burn kinda vibes.
That hug between them was something genuinely vulnerable and a sign of Ironwood letting his guard down because he is tired as fuck. It also was uh...kinda fruity.
Ironwood approaches closer, and Qrow scratches the back of his head, a characteristically nervous gesture that he’s made before; it’s a nervous twitch, manufactured nonchalance. He has no idea what Ironwood wants, but he does know that Ironwood wants something. James is the one to initiate the hug, and Qrow startles and even freezes up before relaxing into it. He seems suprised, but gives the bisexual eye roll of grudging fondness. This is out of character for James - Jimmy - but Qrow doesn’t think that Ironwood is a bad person. He leans into the hug, and the camera cuts out before they separate, suggesting that they probably end up standing there for a long ass time. You can also see from the side shots that it’s a close hug; their torsos are pressed up against each other, front to front, and there’s not a lot of wiggle room. James must be really goddamn depressed. It’s a long, manly, intensley heterosexual hug. Like I said, kinda fruity.
Other people have analyzed the hug shot for shot, so I won’t get too into it, but I think that it was intentionally left as a double red herring; some people thought that maybe he bugged Qrow, and after finding out that he didn’t, we were forced to conclude that this is a genuine olive branch. To find out that Ironwood is sincere but was still susceptible to corruption is that second subversion that I didn’t really expect. I hadn’t prepared myself for it, at least, and neither did Qrow. I wouldn’t go as far to say that Ironwood’s descent into fucking craziness paranoia is triggered by Qrow not ‘reciprocating’ or something, but I do think it’s interesting how the volume opens up with a signifigant interaction between Ironwood and Qrow, only for Qrow to spend the rest of the volume homosexually bonding with Clover, while Ironwood basically has no one as emotional support (again, his subordinates do not have the power or the place to be viewed as equals and the veil of formality is one of isolation). Qrow initiates nothing further, and nothing further happens.
Ironwood’s downfall, in a thematic sense, is that what he Needs is a heart, and when he gets that chance to demonstrate tolerance and empathy, James ultimately rejects his Need (a heart) and his arc reverts into one of villainy. To be specific, Ironwood is essentially a fascist dick, and that is not very sexy. (Speaking of dicks, the thought of Ironwood’s dick makes me laugh. I bet in the RWBY universe, people have made memes about that. I do not accept criticism because I am correct. Anyway,).
Dictators are charming, charismatic, and one of the pillars of their method is absorbing potential political opponents into their own administration to reduce the threat of rebellion, to appear openly tolerant to their supporters, and to further consolidate power. A good example of this would be Mean Girls, which runs on a comedic commentary of dictatorships as a political structure of power. I hate to compare James Ironwood to Regina George, but Regina’s posse includes Karen and Gretchen, two of the only girls who might take away from the authority she holds over the rest of their school, both in their wealth and attractiveness, and Cady’s interesting backstory and conventional attractiveness is the main reason Regina draws her into her own sphere - because she detects a potential threat. Much in the same way, while Ironwood likely has good intentions, his efforts to win over team RWBY and co. - including Qrow himself - is a logical way to consolidate resources. His willingness, at first, to cooperate with political opponents (ie Robyn) is because he’s not inherently evil, and he has nothing to lose. It’s when he is openly opposed and diplomatic gestures no longer hold the necessary weight that he snaps.
In one really interesting meta about Ironqrow’s archetypes (that I reread occasionally just because I really love it), @onewomancitadel posits that Ironwood is framed within the archetype of the Knight in Shining Armor, which should inform us of the moral consistency of his character. The meta was written around the beginning of volume 7, I think, and obviously we have a lot more character development and information to go off of now, but I think she makes a really interesting point about the nature of parallels and how that might help drive Ironwood as a character. I love her analysis of the visual of Ironwood stepping out of an airship wreckage, onto the street, the smoke billowing around him to reveal his cyborg prosthetics, and of the intentional framing. Once his uniform is stripped back, we see a man who is literally half-armor, which could be indicative of a lot of things. He’s emotionally guarded, he’s used as a human weapon, and he wants to be a line of defense. In her words, “The symbolism is really obviously put into perspective of his actions in trying to do the right thing: in the flesh (his true physical self) he is literally a knight in shining armour. From the ground up. Even if it's unseen or distorted by his uniform, his nature is still true.”
While Ironwood clearly has gone down a darker path in the most recent volume, I think this analysis holds true in a crucial way. “Ironwood is working with different information, and he’s doing exactly what he knows: stick to his knightly virtues, even disgraced.” Disgraced, indeed. Ironwood is holding onto his knightly values, and doing what he believes is right. If not right, he believes that it is necessary. The problem is that these values are manifested within Atlas’s sociopolitical-military culture in an inherently toxic way - his response is, at this point, neither rational nor empathetic, but it can be explained partially due to his cultural (flawed) understanding of justice, and because of the extenuating circumstances. The harsher the conditions become, the more difficult it is for anyone to project a facade that is not sincere at its core. If James is to uphold his Knightly virtues, he needs to be a protector, a leader, and a servant all at once while operating under limited intel with dwindling trust. All he has left are the few key players still in his grasp, and the control of the people he is responsible for.
To digress: generally, knights take an oath. It could be to a King, or Lord, or some noble, but Knights are supposed to operate on a code of honor, and chivalry, and to uphold these values throughout the land as an extension of whoever they have pledged themselves to. The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a really good example of the way that, back in the day, chivalry and honor was supposed to place knights on a moral high ground compared to the common people.
In the middle of a celebration in Camelot, an obligatory tradition that has since lost real value but is rehearsed because Camelot fears that failure to uphold traditions that once had meaning is disrespectful, a Green Knight interrupts the celebrations and offers a strange challenge that boils down to a fight to the death. Gawain volunteers because accepting this challenge is what is expected of him, and Arthur would be humiliated if his knights, supposedly the best in the world, would not rise to the challenge. Gawain - and to a certain extent, the rest of Arthur’s knights - are fickle, in a sense, because their adherence to this code is performative, and it allows them to delude themselves into moral superiority and lie both to the commoners and amongst themselves; their identity as knights is based on a falsehood. Gawain is offered the first blow, and after beheading the Green newcomer, is horrified to see him become reanimated and immune to mortal blows. He invites Gawain to receive his own - likely fatal - blow, and gives him a time in which to meet, before promptly leaving.
Throughout the story, Gawain is tested in a variety of ways - in his final test, he fails, and allows his greed for self preservation and the fear of death to lead him to lie to his hosts and proceed to his meeting with the Green Knight under dishonest pretenses. While he is spared at the last second and becomes a better person (after it is revealed that Morgan le Fay orchestrated the ordeal to spook Queen Guinevere) - and by extent, a truer Knight, by the end of the story, the superficial and hypocritical nature of Arthur’s court is still in question, and still unanswered.
See, the entirety of Gawain’s trials was a test, not necessarily for him, but for Arthur and his court as a whole. Morgan wanted to prove the fickle nature of Arthur’s knights. The Knights of the Round Table were considered the best in the land, and to discredit one was to discredit all. What use is tradition if the meaning is empty, what use is chivalry if it is performed for reward instead of merit, and what use is loyalty if it is blind and unearned? Returning to Oz, the Tin Woodman, or Tin Man, grew to be made of tin because his axe became enchanted by the Wicked Witch of the East to sever his own body parts instead of the lumber he tried to cut down. A nearby tinsmith replaced each amputated limb with one of metal, until his entire body became tin and his meat body had been entirely discarded. Something to note is that Nick Chopper’s, (General Ironwood’s) wounds are technically self-inflicted. Each time he swung his axe, he made the decision to continue, knowing of the end result each time. In losing his bodily functions, the Tin Man believed that he had lost his humanity and ability to love.
The tragedy of his origin story draws a pointed correlation to Ironwood’s current dilemma; his unwillingness to stop, his self-imposed isolation, playing into the hands of the witch, and finally, the decision to let go of his ability to love remain consistent throughout both stories.
Watts even refers to Ironwood as a “Tin Solider”; a reference to the Tin (Woods)Man, no doubt, but could also evoke a soldier clanking around in metal armor. Ironwood is a Knight in Shining Armor, through and through. He wants to save the world, but at the terrible cost of civilian autonomy and possibly life. The problem is that he’s pledged himself to a discriminatory and hypocritical system, and his code is something that can easily be misconstrued by fear ( @disregardcanon ), much as Gawain’s own values. The Tin Man is, after all, still a man, and if we’ve learned anything from real fairytales, it is that men are fallible, whether or not they are made of metal.
Ironwood, Alone
he’s a lonely bitch
I know I f- up, I'm just a loser
Shouldn't be with ya, guess I'm a quitter
While you're out there drinkin', I'm just here thinkin'
'Bout where I should've been
I've been lonely, mm, ah, yeah
— Benee, Supalonely (2019)
You do get the sense that Ironwood is riddled with self-loathing conflicting with pride, with self-doubt clashing with competence, and that he is the kind of person who longs for things without verbalizing. Maybe his dad never paid enough attention to him as a kid. Maybe he suffered some terrible physical and emotional trauma, which might as well be assumed, given the extensive nature of his cybernetic limbs. Maybe (probably) he’d be more well-adjusted and would’ve made better decisions if the people around him trusted him and were a little more open. To be fair, though, he is the one at the wheel, and he is making the calls; no one else is to blame for his mistakes, and to pretend otherwise is to deny him accountability. I think we do enough of that in everyday life, in excusing powerful men of their responsibilities. To his credit, I do think he wants to help people. I think James also wants to project the personality of a leader who is stoic, controlled, and measured. He is charming when he wants to be, sympathetic when it suits him, and influential in just the right areas. He is not a sociopath, but he is a politician, and in a lot of ways, those are the same thing. We see in his brief flashes of temper, often prompted by Qrow, or most notably by Oscar, that this is not a calm, stable person. This is someone is on the verge of exploding, who is so fucking angry that he is not in control that it’s killing him, and so he is going to lash out and kill the things that are not within his grip. If the people beneath him will not reciprocate the heart that he offers, then he has no real use of it. James Ironwood does not begin this story as a bad person. This is a tragedy, in however many parts it takes.
I read, in one very smart and very put-together analysis that I cannot find and properly credit at the moment, that part of Ironwood’s (many) failures can be seen in Winter, and how, like Ozpin, he has appointed a woman as his talented, no-nonsense, second chain in command at his right hand. In this way, Winter is an intentional parallel to Glynda, who is, without question, a bad bitch. In theory, surrounding yourself with strong individuals is a demonstration of self restraint, in implementing your own checks and balances. James wants to project that he is powerful, yes, but he is reasonable.
I take this to mean that, to some degree, even if it’s unintentional or subconscious, Winter serves to boost Ironwood’s ego.
The issue with this is that within the inherently hierarchical structure of the military, Winter cannot question, undermine, or challenge Ironwood in a way that is particularly meaningful and their relationship is one of commander and subordinate before colleagues or equals (link to a fantastic post about Winter’s role as the Good, Conscientious Soldier by @fishyfod). Whereas Glynda is free to argue with, converse, and be as combative as she needs to be with Ozpin (although their power dynamic is arguably one of commander and subordinate albeit informally), Winter cannot temper Ironwood effectively, and through the illusion of equality, Ironwood is further isolated.
His head and arms and legs were jointed upon his body, but he stood perfectly motionless, as if he could not stir at all.
Dorothy looked at him in amazement, and so did the Scarecrow, while Toto barked sharply and made a snap at the tin legs, which hurt his teeth.
“Did you groan?” asked Dorothy.
“Yes,” answered the tin man, “I did. I’ve been groaning for more than a year, and no one has ever heard me before or come to help me.”
The Tin Man needs oil to lubricate his joints; without it, he cannot move, and he is rendered helpless and inanimate. When Dorothy and the group find him, he is entirely isolated with no one in sight, and he has been there for such a long time that he has begun to rust. Similarly, Ironwood needs valued voices of dissent to keep him in check. His colleagues were able to serve that purpose in the beginning, and out of them, Qrow is the best example of someone who doesn't take his shit, openly questions him, and looks down on the performative decorum of the military culture that Ironwood is surrounded by. What Ironwood needs is to be flexible and adaptable; his Semblance, Mettle (heh, metal, very nice pun, RoosterTeeth), is a double edged sword in that it gives him supernatural focus and willpower - enough, perhaps, to flay/chop off your own limbs - but it blindsides him, and is only further prolonging his pain.
There is a lot of sympathy to Ironwood’s character, as much as I’ve ragged on him for being an authoritarian, kind of a dick, and bad with kids. There are moments, such as the previously mentioned dinner party, where he shows his colors a bit, and when he assures the students at the Vytal Festival that there’s no shame in leaving before the battle begins, and in giving Yang a prosthetic arm before her father even has to ask. As far as Generals go, it seems that he’s seen soldiers come and go and understands, at least in his best moments, that not everyone is the same, and not everyone has power of unflinching determination to rely on. Ironwood performs his best when he tempers himself because he understands himself, and others. It’s when he fails to self-reflect that his hypocrisy shows through. Glynda points it out, too, as does Qrow; Ironwood advocates for trust but often fails to give it himself, going behind Ozpin’s back, being absolutely shit at field communication, and now the whole fascist, borderline-genocidal keruffle he’s gotten himself into.
I think that Ironwood reaching out to Qrow was his ethical last stand, his last chance and conscious effort to choose the right path. Qrow is unequivocally an equal, not like how Ozpin is the Big Boss, the authority that James becomes disillusioned with and tries to overthrow. He wants someone to trust, desperately so, and Qrow wants that too, but narrative subversion has hands. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man have no brain and heart respectively, and are in need of them. As it turns out, Qrow is actually a pragmatic guy with solid principles angled against authoritarianism, and Ironwood is a dick who would rather enforce martial law than to empathize and tame his military-shaped boner for one second.
I might conclude that someone like Qrow might be best for Ironwood, but that does not mean that someone like Ironwood would be the best for Qrow. Qrow has a brain after all, but Ironwood does not choose his heart when it matters, case in point. Even the intro of the current season features Salem and Ironwood on a chessboard; his white pieces are disappearing, dissolving into dust, as hers transform into Grimm. Ironwood is isolating himself by depleting himself of allies. As this post by @hadesisqueer points out, Ironwood isn’t even positioned as King, the supposed commander, but the Queen, the most versatile player on the board that is so far underused, since he hasn’t moved from his spot. Ironwood’s refusal to unify against Salem is his failure to strategically utilize the best resources that were available to him; soon, the pieces will be swallowed by the dark.
James is guilty of something that a lot of us are guilty of: doing a Bad Thing for what we have convinced ourselves is a Good Reason, when in reality, it is actually a lot of Very Bad Reasons. James Ironwood is a Knight archetype, through and through, and he is charging forward to do the right thing. He is afraid, he is lying to himself, and he will never surrender.
“All the same,” said the Scarecrow, “I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one.”
“I shall take the heart,” returned the Tin Woodman; “for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”
Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was right, and she decided if she could only get back to Kansas and Aunt Em, it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had no brains and the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted.
The lesson of James Ironwood is a lesson of failure, and of the way that we succumb to fear, because that is Salem’s agenda, really, in the end: fear. It’s the negative emotions, fear being first and foremost, that draw in and empower the Grimm, and it’s fear and uncertainty that causes chaos. It is when Dorothy’s friends give into their fear that they are truly defeated. FDR’s assertion that “The only thing to fear is fear itself” holds true here; it’s not so much that these characters are afraid of losing their lives, their loved ones, and of the dark, but that they do not have the love or the resources to be brave for themselves or for others.
Qrow as a character is introduced as one who is already defeated, in a sense. Half of his team is gone, dead or estranged, he’s forced into the shadows of espionage to protect a world he knows is darker than it should be, and he’s fighting a losing battle with alcoholism. As charismatic as he’s written, he’s referred to as a “dusty old crow”, a hunter of renowned skill but past the prime of his life.
Dorothy’s three titular companions are defined by what they lack; in the same vein of the Disney I Want song (a main character’s main monologue song in which their wants and desires that motivate them throughout the rest of the film is laid out in song; ie Part of Your World, Reflections, How Far I’ll Go), the Lion, Tin Man, and the Scarecrow want bravery, a heart, and a brain respectively. RWBY relies on flipping the script of its characters based on what the audience might expect from the source material; Ruby is not just a helpless little girl - her introduction is a badass with a scythe. The Scarecrow is a chronic alchoholic. Cinderella is a victim of abuse, and is also a villain who wants to set the world aflame. Subversion, subversion, subversion.
There are obviously parallels between the characters in RWBY and in their own fairytales to keep them in character, and part of the fun is spotting those clues and occasionally connecting the dots to anticipate the direction of the narrative and certain connections between characters and the significance of their arcs. While I’m not aware of Dorothy Gale’s RWBY counterpart, if she has already been established or is yet to be introduced, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Ruby has adopted a Dorothy-eque persona and can act as a surrogate in a way. She begins as a sweet, naive child eager to join a world of color and excitement, who initially believes that she has “normal knees” and is thrust into a political scheme full of powerful and older players. She even has a small dog as a companion, Toto Zwei, who seems like an odd addition, since he’s usually sidelined and basically forgotten about except in a few spare moments, unless he’s there to draw further comparisons to Dorothy. She may not be from Kansas, but she is first helped by Glynda (the Good Witch), and later expects assistance from Ozpin, Qrow, and the later Ozian counterparts. I find it a peculiar detail that for Ruby to be Little Red Riding Hood alone, she is surrounded specifically by Dorothy’s companions. This, of course, only increases the importance of the relevance of the Oz series in particular and the characters that are borrowed.
In the case of Ozpin’s inner circle, Dorothy’s closest comrades (sans Toto) differ in crucial ways to their source material. (After finishing this essay, I found a much better, condensed explanation by @neopoliitan )
Disillusioned by the Ozpin, the Wizard (who has been projecting an illusion of a failsafe) and overwhelmed by the rise of the Wicked Witch of the West, Lionhart (the Lion), gives into his cowardice and ultimately forgoes the arc and redemption of his character from the source material; as such, he is by all definitions, a failure and a premonition, as Ironwood eventually follows. If RWBY is a dark take on classic fairytales, then it is only fitting that these characters are charred husks of their fairytale selves - these are people, and some people are selfish, scared, and cowardly, and they do not overcome these traits.
This is all opinion based, pure speculation. I have no idea what will happen in the next episode, and whatever goes down will be...shit will hit the fan. I’m under no delusions that Ironqrow is going to be canon in a healthy, tender, endgame sense. They’re both kind of losing their minds, and Ironwood is shitting absolute bricks. No, they’re going to try to kill each other, and I personally cannot wait for Qrow to cleave this man in two. (Not sexually, just, literally. Like, with a scythe.)
On that note, I think that the RWBY writers are good at callbacks, at drawing attention to their own connections, and if Ironwood and Qrow’s inevitable confrontation is scheduled, then it will include visual callbacks to Qrow saving James at Beacon, maybe shot for shot. Their visuals have only gotten better as time goes on, and I imagine Ironwood’s eyes widening as Qrow leaps through the air, scythe drawn, in recal of a moment so long ago when they weren’t on the same page, but they were at least on the same side. When Qrow brings the blade down, there will be no enemy behind him. Only Jimmy James. The difference between the two of them will be that Qrow isn’t fighting out of fear, but out of love, for what happened to Clover, and to what could happen to his girls.
Qrow’s reliance on alcohol, as well as his (mostly) feigned nonchalance is meant to fit with the motif that the Scarecrow has no brain, and, had he a mind to desire anything, would desire it most of all. His role is, also, notably, gathering intelligence for Ozpin (his character is also based on Munnin from Norse mythology). There is so much about Qrow that is an act and so much that is not, and I think that this act is born both from this motif and from his own cynicism, and the alcohol contributes to this act. However, he eventually gets sober after Ruby expresses legitimate frustration, and he understands that he’s putting their lives at risk. While one could say that he gave up drinking for the kids, I would argue that the kids - Ruby in particular - made him want to give up drinking for himself, to better himself.
While Lionhart and Ironwood betray the people depending on them, Qrow’s love for his nieces (and for the kids) allows him to deviate from this pattern. The answer to fear is perhaps not merely bravery - Qrow’s triumph is love.
Ironwood knows triumph in the context of a military state, but he’s backed himself into a corner. Soon he will find himself alone and friendless. Hopefully, his last stand will not be in vain.
#ironqrow#james ironwood#qrow branwen#rwby#rwby8 spoilers#rwby volume 8#rwby meta#ok this is all just based on my opinion ok#like i ship ironqrow but ironwood is a dicktator if u know what i mean#he is probably gonna die but anyway#ironqrow meta#winter schnee#snowbird#also includes links and credit to other posts and metas#I just had to get this off of my chest ok
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why the nie sect leaders’ inevitable death by qi deviation isn’t (just) about the sabers
(now at AO3!)
So, okay, this is a meta I’ve been working on/wanting to write/dropping hints to various people about now for quite a while! I think it’s significant thematically to some of the main questions MDZS/CQL asks, about cycles of justice and vengeance, the tension between personal agency and aspects of a situation outside one’s control, and good intentions often not being enough on their own, particularly to forestall problems resulting from imperfect or fatally flawed means to an end.
As a fantasy story, I think one of the strengths of MDZS/CQL is how it uses magic to reflect aspects of its thematic questions in certain cases as literal external forces, events that exist in a format outside just a character’s internal journey. The metaphors and proper social and personal orders these characters live by, have very real physical consequences in the world that result from the existence and manipulation of magical/spiritual energies.
And to my view, the part of this that I want to make the case for here, is how this relates to the Nie sect’s cultivation practises, and why I think the clan’s history of leaders succumbing to instability and qi deviation is a more complicated interplay of a few different factors, rather than just an externally-imposed illness whose source is purely their saber spirits.
* * *
Like, okay. The characters and narrative do, in fact, spend a lot of time discussing the Nie sect leaders’ early violent deaths in the context of their sabers’ spirits becoming angry and aggressive and affecting their mental and spiritual stability. So it makes sense to focus on those actual items as the essential reason behind why they qi deviate and end up dying the way they do. But there was something… logically unsatisfying to me about the idea that just the number of edges on your bladed weapon would make such a difference that sword spirits (also generally used for killing! because they’re also deadly weapons!) are apparently morally neutral but sabers, on the other hand, just Cannot Stop with the killing once they’ve gotten a taste of it.
But if you take an experimental step away from the idea that sabers must somehow be Inherently Different from swords in their response to violence - what possible explanations are left? Or, asked a different way - what makes the Nie sect’s ideological cultivation focus distinct from other sects’? The Lan focus on regulation and self-restraint as the path to goodness; the Jiang focus on self-knowledge and following what you know as right even against difficult odds; the Jin seem to emphasise value in beauty and unique rarity… and what the Nie seem to place the most value on, is dispensation of justice and abhorring evil, even to an extent that refuses attempts at compromise.
The only problem is, the justice that they (and plenty of others) seem to focus on most often, is justice for capital crimes - paying with a life for a life - and no matter how righteous and justified the motives, what this still ends up with is a spiritual path that spends a comparatively awful lot of time on seeking others’ deaths. And we see, throughout the story, more than one thematic hint that this is maybe not the best method for moving toward harmony or immortality.
Lan Qiren’s impromptu quiz of Wei Wuxian when the latter is fucking off in class. His example problem specifies the resentful spirit was an executioner in life (societally-sanctioned to kill others for heinous crimes), and Wei Wuxian notes that one who’s killed so many is a very likely sort to become a resentful corpse; meanwhile his many victims also remain tethered to cycles of vengeance and anger, able to be easily stirred up into a force of resentful energy that would target him if their corpses were disturbed.
The dialogue between Wei Wuxian and Fang Mengchen in the Burial Mounds after the attempted siege turns into the major sects being saved from a trap. It’s all very fine and good to hold a grudge, to see a lack of justice for a harm that can’t ever be undone or repaired when the one who caused it gets to be alive and well (or even not!), but as Wei Wuxian says - what are you going to do about it? It’s so easy for there to always be a wrong that needs righting (in a real or alleged guilty party’s blood). But will it get you anywhere? Can a person, can a society, mete out justice or vengeance once and have that wipe the slate clean, or will the wound reopen again and demand yet more suffering? Where does it end?
The discussion about the Nie’s ancestral saber halls with Huisang, where Wei Wuxian notes that the method of suppressing the saber spirits edges rather close to demonic cultivation. In literal terms, that question seems to be directed at the actual use of evil individuals’ transforming corpses to contain the sabers’ power. But I think the entire conversation, and Huisang’s need to swear them to secrecy and enlistment as backup if other clans find out and get angry, contains a certain amount of thematic subtext reflecting not just on the saber tomb itself, but the Nie clan’s cultivation as a whole. These are significant and revered family heirlooms, not easily or justly discarded, but maintaining them isn’t without cost, and the spiritual fallout rests on the edge of a knife, needing the perpetual presence of an evil to fight to remain in balance: the saber tomb is both the literal and metaphorical end result of the clan leaders’ cultivation path.
“But why,” you may ask, “if the principles underlying the Nie sect’s whole culture have an edge that’s sharper and more harmful to the user’s qi than other cultivation philosophies of the rest of the sword-using sects, do we only see “death by qi deviation” as an issue for the sect leaders, and not more widespread among a larger portion of the disciples?”
And that’s where the “(just)” part of the title of this post comes in, because that aspect is where the difference comes down to the sabers - or, specifically, the named sabers that have spirits of their own. The spiritual sabers aren’t bloodthirsty and excited to haunt and/or kill people right out of the gate, but rather, as Huisang explains, they become restless after spending their wielder’s lifetime destroying evil. A cultivator and their spiritual tools develop a relationship over time, as their cultivation is practised and refined - they bond, they recognise one another, and crucially, they seem to be able to share a kind of spiritual feedback loop, with the energies and intentions of one connecting to and ideally bolstering the strength of the other. The Nie clan in general seems marked by particularly strong relationships between individual cultivator and weapon, considering the sabers’ refusal to allow a clan leader’s descendants to inherent them, and both the circumstances of Mingjue’s father’s death and his own trauma reaction to that death.
So in this case, the illness and eventual qi deviations the Nie clan leaders suffer, the way the saber spirits come to weigh on their minds and emotions, make sense to me as a confluence of the particularly close bond and almost spiritual symbiosis between wielder and weapon, and the particular subject of emphasis that the clan leader lives by in how they train with and use that weapon. Focusing on justice as killing, as violent destruction of evil (the last resort one should aspire to after other solutions have failed, per Lan Qiren’s lesson), may not be the most spiritually healthy in any circumstance, but it’s only when you have half a lifetime’s worth of a mental feedback loop between you and this external, semi-sentient part of yourself that’s reinforcing the spiritual toll of that path, that you actually end up with a resulting qi deviation and death.
* * *
So, anyway, I do want to be clear having put forth this argument, that my point here is not to condemn the Nies, nor for that matter blame the sect leaders for their own deaths - that’s very much not in line with how the text itself displays flaws and virtues as two sides of the same coin (at times divided only by the context around them), and shows how destructive consequences can result from the best of intentions. For that matter, each major sect has unquestionably valuable basic principles at its heart, and just like microcosms of any culture, society, or group, displays instances of those principles being distorted, misaimed, or taken to extremes in ways that cause disharmony and pain to those in their path.
I think the way it plays out for the Nie clan just interests me in particular because of the way their uniqueness in cultivation method plays such known havoc with its members’ bodies and minds, and the way it straddles the divide between upright and demonic cultivation. MDZS asks, I think, more questions than it offers definitive answers to, and a significant one of those is, even if vengeance, even if death-as-justice is righteous, where do you balance all the harm done to others (up to and including) the justice-seeker in deciding whether to continue down that path of action?
And if it’s the Nie sect’s spiritual focus in combination with the spirits of their sabers that wear down a slow stream of damage to their qi, rather than simply the external threat of the sabers alone - that seems congruent, to me, with the suggestions offered elsewhere in the story.
#MDZS#The Untamed#CQL#meta#no good things for the poor sad cultivators#op#rambling#Nie Mingjue#Nie Huaisang#nooottt really putting in the searchable character tags I hope considering it's less *about* them and more ancillary...? aahh#Nie sect fascinates me it really really does#(alternate title: huisang is philosophically not much of an exception in his sect even though he doesn't use a saber . txt)#also ty Ame for doing a read-through of thiiissss ur the best <333#long post for ts
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So my original idea was to just tackle my thoughts on RNM’s portrayal of Michael Guerin’s bisexuality, which is something I have loved a lot. But then 2x06 aired, and we got some beautiful insight into Alex Manes, and I had to shift gears a bit to include that.
Because I know tensions regarding this episode are high, consider this a warning - I am going to talk about Michael and Alex, and a bit about the airstream scene in 2x06. And I am going to discuss how it has resonated with me in a positive way. But mostly, this is about how sexuality is complicated, and how amazing it is to see depictions on television that truly make me feel seen.
One of my favorite things about Michael Guerin, and about how RNM has chosen to portray his bisexuality, is that it’s not obvious. He doesn’t feel the need to talk about it, or discuss it - and in fact, only offers it up to Isobel in 1x10 as she’s questioning her own feelings in an effort to make her feel more comfortable. Later in 1x11, he snaps at Max because well, Max has just poked and prodded at him talk (and they’re stuck in the bunker together with nothing else to do). And someone who isn’t comfortable in who they are doesn’t say things like, “It’s not that complicated.” That is something firmly in the camp of yeah, this is who I am, what of it? Because make no mistake, it is incredibly important to me to hear characters like Michael Guerin self-identify on screen as bisexual.
Part of this portrayal can of course, also be attributed to Michael’s upbringing in the foster care system, where talking about himself was never encouraged or allowed. Because I don’t think, given how it is repeatedly reinforced that Michael shunned most aspects of humanity on Earth, that he was ever ashamed of his sexuality. Though I do believe that said upbringing did affect his own feelings of self-worth, and how he saw himself in the eyes of others.
Something I’ve seen mentioned a lot are two interactions we see on screen: between Alex & Maria in 1x10, and between Maria & Liz in 1x13, and the idea that there is “outing” of Michael. And while, I do understand and respect a lot of those arguments, especially regarding their importance regarding the LGBTQ community as a whole, something I don’t see discussed are people who don’t necessarily want to have a formal coming out, or who don’t feel the need to initiate those conversations regarding their sexuality. Even though yes, both Alex and Maria do technically out Michael (though neither do it with any malicious intent), I don't believe that Michael himself would care that other people know he is bisexual (his feelings for Alex are a different story entirely). And part of that may be that he doesn't believe anyone else thinks of him that much to even discuss him due to that upbringing he had, and also because the act of coming out would involve the feeling of being under a microscope (thanks for that wording, Riley), and Michael Guerin would definitely want to avoid that.
But back to my original point - at no point during Season 1 does Michael Guerin give the impression that he is ashamed of his sexuality - the lack of bringing it up first does not read that way to me. It reads more as Michael sees it simply as part of who he is, and that’s it. He can’t change it, and he’s already different (he’s a literal alien, ffs), so why worry about it. It very much reminds me of how I have viewed my own sexuality for years - it is simply just part of who I am. I have never felt the need to sit anyone down and announce my sexuality - in fact, I came out to my mother as I was walking out the door to go on a date. She asked what his name was, and I just replied what her name was.
But there seems to exist this idea within the LGBTQ community that every person needs to have a “coming out.” That we need to be completely in control of who knows, and how they find out, and when they find out, which is not something I agree with completely. Now, also know that I understand the importance of this idea to many, because of rampant homophobic attitudes that remain present within our society. But I see very few people discussing and supporting those of us who would rather not have to announce it in some grand way - because is this not also allowing someone to control their narrative? It has definitely made me wonder how different my own acceptance of my sexuality could have been had I believed that it wasn’t a requirement for me to come out to the people in my life (an idea which sends my anxiety into a tailspin, tbh).
Again, this is just my perspective regarding the overall portrayal of Michael’s bisexuality. It is not meant to act as a correct version, just sharing why I have particularly enjoyed what RNM has done.
But it was not Michael Guerin that made me want to write fanfic, and it was not Michael Guerin that truly made me love this show - it was in fact, Alex Manes. It was Alex Manes, who is confrontational, who is analytical, who needs facts first and who lives so much within his own head, that truly drew me into this show. Alex Manes who very clearly has struggled not with the fact that he is gay, but with that outward expression of his sexuality. In canon, this is very much due to the trauma of his childhood, to growing up in an abusive household that rejected everything about who he was as a person, and tried to force him into a box that was very much not who he is. And while I did not have that kind of upbringing, the idea of believing you won’t be accepted even among the people who should love you unconditionally is a universal feeling within the LGBTQ community.
Alex’s talk with Maria in the truck is perhaps some of the most relatable queer representation I’ve ever seen. Because it dives into the different types of love and attraction and how not every touch between two people needs to be sexual in nature. And it lays out very plainly how important it is to have trust between people. But it’s also about recognizing what you do want, and accepting that for yourself. And that conversation is so important toward understanding what happens later on in the Airstream.
Because Alex, due to his upbringing, doesn’t believe that he is worthy of being loved in that way. When Maria comforts Michael over the realization that he could have lost both of them, Alex says he should go, not because he doesn’t want to be there. He says it because he feels like he shouldn’t be allowed to be there, to want to be there. Alex feels like an intrusion, even though he’s gone through the same horrifying ordeal and he’s with two people he loves and feels safe around. Maria recognizes that immediately, and moves back to Alex in order to give him the safety he needs as well. Maria is acting in regards to both of the boys love languages - Alex needs that physical touch of reassurance (kissing him), Michael needs to hear it verbally (”it’s okay”). And furthermore, they all need each other in that moment (”I just want us all safe”).
But it is specifically Alex’s speech in the truck earlier, about touch and self-acceptance that has me sobbing every time I watch it. Because even though I got my first crush on a girl as a teenager, it wasn’t until years later that I actually allowed myself to act on that. It was only years later that I learned just how different my attraction toward men and women really was, that I enjoyed different things for different reasons from the different sexes and that was okay. So that speech has just really resonated with me as a bisexual woman who struggled for years with acceptance of her sexuality, of being able to act on it, and it makes me incredibly happy to see a television show (A CW SHOW ABOUT COWBOY ALIENS OK) conquering these things in such a relatable way.
All of this ended up making me go back to something Chasing wrote last year about Michael’s bisexuality, and the portrayal we’re seeing, and something she said in her meta: “No one is harder on queer representation and queer media than queer people - and I get it. We’ve had so much bad representation and we’re sick of it and that’s understandable. But it’s turned into this thing where every slice of representation has to be Perfect or it’s Garbage, and it’s leading creators to not want to try because they’re so harshly run off every time they do. And when they don’t try, they don’t learn, and when they don’t learn, they don’t do better.” So maybe the rep isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a valiant effort being made to reach out to an underrepresented community. And for me personally, the depiction doesn’t have to be perfect, because people aren’t perfect, and sexuality isn’t one size fits all. What may make one person feel seen and understood, another may not see themselves represented at all - but that’s okay. Because with more representation in media, comes different tellings and stories, and comes different ways people can relate because the queer community is not a monolith. We all look at things through different lenses and experiences, but it becomes hurtful when those who don’t see themselves represented in a specific piece of media start telling those who do that they are wrong. And I wish more people would take that into consideration during discussions and criticisms.
Finally, I want to end with this gif, because woo boy. This face and that look. I know that look. I have made that look. This look is so goddamn recognizable and familiar. Because there’s also something about knowing you’re watching an actor who has probably also gone through a lot of these same feelings the character is expressing, that it just comes through in their performance and makes it all the more relatable and real (and especially how even the script itself makes it obvious it was written by people in the queer community).
#roswell new mexico#roswell nm meta#rnm 2x06 airstream scene#michael guerin#alex manes#not really malexa#but a little malexa#notso writes meta#also some of my own personal thoughts#does any of this makes sense#i have no idea but i needed to finally get it all out#i love alex manes and michael guerin a lot ok
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first thoughts about episode 11
So a few hours behind most people, I have finally watched episode 11 and … what a ride!
First let’s start off by comparing what I had predicted earlier on with what actually happened:
The eye injury Michael inflicted on Voq in episode 2 ended up super important (Correct)
Voq revealed (Correct)
Voq fighting against mirror!Voq (Correct)
Lorca being revealed in the same episode (Wrong)
Ash/Michael going down in flames (Correct)
Ash vs. Voq being the only prime vs. mirror showdown (Wrong)
4/6 isn’t too bad a score, and the episode honestly exceeded my wildest hopes (which I keep low on purpose). I am happy to get stuff wrong as long as it’s better than I anticipated! And it was.
And I admit I’m pretty proud of figuring out the eye injury was important, as it was what almost immediately clued me in to Ash being Voq and I have not seen it discussed anywhere else (if someone else did figure it out as well, feel free to comment and I’ll amend my post).
Now onto the analysis. Beware, this is not a meta, just some ideas after watching the episode a few times.
Ash/Michael – welcome to tragedy, population: us
Forewarned is forearmed: the show definitely did warn us, though not in so many words, that this could only end in tears. Regardless, witnessing Ash and Michael’s relationship crash and burn was beyond painful.
I wrote in my earlier meta that I didn’t believe that Ash/Michael could come back from all this. I stand by my opinion more than ever after episode 12.
First and foremost, there is the fact that as soon as Voq got his memory back (and therefore his full agency) he made his choice, in full conscience.
And that choice was to murder Michael.
Let that sink in for a while.
He chose to murder her in cold blood.
Worse, if mirror!Saru hadn’t intervened, he would have gone through with it and succeeded. It was only because of Michael showing kindness to Saru earlier on that she didn’t die.
Later on in the episode, Voq shows no remorse. No regrets. Not even a hint of internal pain.
To me, more than anything, this highlights that their relationship is dead in a romantic sense.
You can come back from a lot of things – lies, double-crossing, even betrayal – but attempted murder without a hint of remorse or regret is more than a line crossed.
Especially as they are an established relationship, not two adversaries on a battlefield (I would not hold their first fight in episode 2 to the same standard, for example – that was a clearly different situation).
If the show did walk that back, and put them back together, I don’t think I could continue watching. I liked Ash/Michael but after watching episode 11, I’m out.
Some people have speculated that Michael could potentially find mirror!Tyler and pick up the relationship with him instead. I see many issues with this:
Assuming there is even a Tyler…
And his mirror!version is not a racist jerk…
Michael did not have feelings for Tyler, she had feelings for Tyler/Voq…
And just picking up a spare right after losing the original guy feels a bit… cheap?
I know, I can hear some of you saying: wait, aren’t you the one who wrote that long boring meta about how Lorca had a past relationship with mirror!Michael?
Yes, I am. And I stand by it, by the way. I truly think it would be really lovely storytelling to have Lorca finding his lost love in another universe after tragedy struck (and if Michael hadn’t been sentenced to life in prison, to a literal “future full of misery”, I’m not sure he would have interfered at all – just a gut feeling).
When it comes to Michael and Ash, trying to replace the original guy (who attempted to murder you) with a lookalike equipped with a better personality is problematic to say the least.
It would cheapen their actual relationship (past or not, it did exist!) and totally erase Voq from the equation, leaving us to wonder what purpose this whole arc served. Unsatisfying on so many levels, so that’s a pretty firm no from me.
In the future, what will happen with Voq?
Until we go back to the prime!universe, probably not a whole lot. Michael might have to face him again to come to terms with some things, though.
Once we are back, from a story perspective Voq will have to resume his own narrative arc, which means potentially breaking out with L’rell and going back to the Klingons.
Perhaps a resolution to the war can then be found before the end of season 1 but it would necessitate a time jump: no way can we go believably from murderous fanatic Voq to “humans are not so bad” Voq in 2 episodes.
We might get there eventually, if his experiences as Ash can bring him the same wisdom mirror!Voq displayed. But again, this type of character development takes time.
Before we move on… in hindsight all of Tyler’s declaration of love and protection sound pretty hollow right about now. And yes, I’m bitter about it on Michael’s behalf.
Michael deserves better, dammit.
Michael/Lorca
The agony booth scene
So much to unpack here, it almost deserved its own post.
Before anything else… poor Gabriel. I mean look at him. He needs a hug and a stiff drink, is what he needs.
So, the agony booth scene. They are both standing. Lorca looks like hell, he is shaking and barely holding together. Importantly, this has stripped away a lot of his defenses. He is not in control the way he usually is, not anymore.
Michael is conflicted about what to do with the rebel base. Lorca’s response is immediate, do what you have to do and bomb them if you have to.
Now I have seen some people react to this as confirmation of Lorca being evil or being out to grab the throne for himself.
But let’s keep a few things in mind:
Lorca is familiar with the Empress, and he correctly foresees the fact that she will be mightily displeased at her orders not being followed. Michael is taking a huge tactical risk by being merciful, and it ends up having huge consequences.
Even if he is not affiliated with the rebels, it doesn’t follow that he would not be leading a rebel Terran faction of his own. As far as we have seen, the rebel group led by Voq doesn’t seem to have any Terran members. It would be fairly logical that there would be dissent within the Terran ranks beyond the non-human resistance.
The conversation that follows is pretty amazing. This is one of the first time we see Michael inspire Lorca, pulling him toward her idealism and Starfleet morals and away from the mirror universe’s darker, more ruthless standards.
After all, wasn’t that explicitely one of the reasons he chose her?
You chose to do the right thing, even at great personal cost.
That moment, all the way back in episode 3, made me certain that Lorca isn’t evil.
Dark? Maybe. Morally grey? Sure.
Evil? No.
I mean let’s be logical about this. If I were a villain intent on committing a villainous plot, I wouldn’t go ahead and specifically pick a person with a strong moral compass to help me with it. They would of course try to thwart me at every turn. It would make zero sense.
Ah, penguin, I can hear some people say, but what if Lorca needs her, specifically, to access the Empress? Wouldn’t he recruit her and then manipulate her into doing his bidding then?
Sure. So let’s take a detour to “How to manipulate someone 101”:
Destroy your victim’s self esteem
Use gifts and favors to create a feeling of obligation
Isolate them from their support system: family, friends, romantic attachments
Denigrate their achievements
Undermine their self confidence
Punish the victim for perceived transgressions
Right. And in contrast, so far Lorca has:
Helped her rebuild her confidence on her own (contrast the start and beginning of episode 3, it’s such an amazing change)
Given her a job and a place aboard a starship again, while avoiding her gratitude as much as possible
Helped her maintain or rebuild her support system: mounted a rescue for Sarek (family), gave her Tilly as a roommate (who was the only one good hearted enough to look past Michael’s transgressions and befriend her), and kept his opinion to himself concerning her relationship with Tyler (though he was undoubtedly jealous)
Praised her for her strategic mind and her strong sense of morale
Encouraged her to take pride in herself (“You did well, Burnham. You should be proud.”)
Trusted her with the most important missions
Ignored at least one transgression that could have landed her in the brig (that fight they had on the bridge in episode 9)
I’m sure I’m forgetting things but you get the idea.
Honestly, if he needed her only as a tool, it would have been much smarter to keep her under his thumb with her confidence broken. Look how pliable she was at the start of episode 3.
(Again, I do think that the fact that Georgiou is the Empress is significant, and that having Michael on his side against her is a tactical advantage – but that’s not the whole of it, by a long shot.)
Anyway, moving on.
Michael sweetens the deal by adding the part about finding out how the Fire Wolf leads his coalition, but essentially it all boils down to:
She appeals to his moral sense
She asks him not to force her to commit such a terrible act
And it works. Partly because after so much torture, Lorca’s defenses are way down. But I think it’s mostly because of Michael’s ultimate secret weapon: she says please.
Seriously.
She says please, and… that’s that.
Just like with the Sarek rescue mission, Lorca just gives in and makes an illogical tactical decision (which, I might add, results in the Empress coming straight for them at the end of the episode).
Visually, I don’t have much to say beyond the extensive use of choker shots. Those are very often used to create emotional intimacy and tension, as I’ve mentioned many times before. This is not a shot you’d use for people who are not developing a strong relationship of some sort (be it friendship or romance).
And finally… Lorca’s “Hurry back. Please.” just kills me.
That’s not an order. That’s a plea.
The meeting room scene
Their second scene together is quite different. Lorca is looking a little better, while Michael seems shattered by her recent betrayal.
By the way. I love how Michael (who is a tough cookie) is psychically exhausted after 3 days in the mirror!universe and how much reflection (pardon the pun) she is doing on it.
Hopefully it will help mitigate her anger at Lorca when she finds out he is from the mirror!universe too (and has spent his entire life there without turning into a human-shaped demon spawn like the rest of the Terrans). At this point, overthrowing the Empress is starting to look like a moral imperative.
Lorca informs her they have to stay longer, for reasons that are both tactically sound and highly convenient, because I’m pretty sure he plans to face the Empress at some point (though probably not right there and then).
There also a lovely little morsel I wasn’t expecting: Lorca sounds jealous. He can’t bring himself to say “liked” or “loved” (that little pause is very telling) and when he says “Tyler”, you can tell he truly wanted to say “what’s his face”.
As an aside, I think he only noticed Michael’s partiality for Tyler in the previous episode, when Ash had a panic attack in the worker bee. I don’t think I mentioned it in my main meta, but I adore the way Lorca manages to sound at once gruffly protective (“You can relax too. He’s safe.”) and jealous despite himself.
Moving on.
Michael just can’t take it anymore, she’s scared, and she just admits it to him, leading to this amazing exchange:
“I don’t think I can survive this place alone.”
“You are not alone, Michael. We will survive this place… together.”
And then Lorca takes her hand. This is the first touch we have seen him initiate with her. It’s also the second time he calls her Michael, and that’s not a coincidence.
Not Michael Burnham, not Burnham, not Specialist Burnham.
Just plain Michael.
Right there and then, Lorca is not being her captain. He’s just being a man, comforting a woman.
Even more importantly, @trashywestallen made a brilliant point in one of our discussions, which I hadn’t noticed until she pointed it out.
This scene is meant to be the mirror of the scene in episode 10 when Ash reaches for Michael’s hand during their discussion in the mess hall.
Both Ash and Lorca are on seated the left, while Michael is sitting on the right. (Very quick aside, the man on the left/woman on the right is imagery commonly found in classical paintings, with the Arnolfini portrait commonly cited as an example.) Both contacts are initiated by the man.
That’s where the similarities end, because everything else is inverted.
In the scene with Ash and Michael, the camera zooms in on their joined hands but very noticeably, the shot is obstructed by a teacup.
Contrasting this with Michael and Lorca: their hands are in plain view. There is even a shot with the light streaming in from behind through the window and onto their joined hands.
Another major difference: Tyler grabs Michael’s hand possessively to reassure himself. Lorca lays a calming hand over Michael’s to reassure her.
Ash takes Michael’s right hand with his right; Lorca covers Michael’s right hand with his left. Symbolically, this is hugely significant. The left hand is the hand (or arm) a gentleman or a knight would use to escort his lady: keeping the right hand, his sword hand, free to defend her.
Lastly: Ash asks her to let him handle things on his own; Lorca says they will figure it out together.
Point taken, I guess?
Everything else
Stamets! I am pretty glad to have been wrong about there being only one twin encounter. Go save your love, Paul. (Though mirror!Stamets freaks me out a little).
Empress Georgiou is utterly terrifying. I love it.
Michael lying to spare Saru (while Saru lies to spare her) is just lovely. Also interesting to note she is willing to lie for a good cause (not unlike other people I could name…)
Michael’s kindness to mirror!Saru coming back to save her is almost karmic.
Mirror!Voq was awesome. Wise, strong, everything a leader could be. Unfortunately, that means prime!Voq is the evil twin. Bummer.
Mirror!Sarek, who’s met Michael all of 5 minutes, is more validating and full of praise than our own Sarek. Seriously, dude, you’re going to have to step up the dad game, presto.
#star trek#star trek discovery#star trek discovery spoilers#star trek disco spoilers#lorca x burnham#michael burnham#gabriel lorca#michael burnham x gabriel lorca#st:fallenangels#USS ArchAngel#st:archangel#uss archangels
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Girls made of snow, language made of thorns, and putting ourselves back in the narrative
I’ve had some ideas swirling around my head ever since I finished reading Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust that condensed while I was reading Leigh Bardugo’s short story collection The Language of Thorns, so I want to talk about it a little.
It started with the realization that Girls made of Snow, while it is a Snow White retelling (or perhaps better called a reimagining), completely leaves out the whole seven dwarves part of the story. In my review, I pointed this out as something I liked — the story didn’t need to sidetrack there, and it kept us focused on the real core of the story: Lynet’s relationship with her stepmother, Mina. Lynet being Snow White, Mina is the Evil Queen.
The book alternates chapters between Lynet’s present day and Mina’s journey from the daughter of a sorcerer to the bride of Lynet’s father, making Mina the second main character. This is where the book’s “feminist fantasy reimagining” tagline comes in. The point of Bashardoust’s story is to explore the stepmother-daughter relationship and how they could come into conflict without it being about who is the fairest of them all.
The point of tension Bashardoust goes for is about politics and power, a much more satisfying reason than “well, women get angry when another woman is prettier, that’s all”. But the framework of Snow White also gives her plenty of room to work with how women’s appearances and age are seen and judged. What if Lynet’s beauty binds her to her dead mother in a way that strangles her, while Mina struggles with knowing her beauty gains her what respect she commands and aging could steal it away? The commentary that emerges isn’t new — I think we all realize how damaging the value placed on women’s appearances is — but using the cultural touchstone of Snow White makes this version powerful. It’s probably my favorite thing about the book, even above giving Lynet a female love interest, which is something we’re going to circle back to.
Consider, for example, Mina’s power to control glass. The idea of giving a woman who is forced to care about her beauty the power to make looking glasses into weapons (the power to control what controls her in the original story) has an inherent message that’s only as powerful as it is because the iconography of Snow White is so well known to Bashardoust’s audience. That’s why she can give us a handful of Snow White parallels and then leave out one of the biggest story points and still have us understand the commentary she’s making. The messages are built in; she doesn’t have to build them first in order to tear them down. They’re already there.
Because we know fairytales. Reference Cinderella’s slipper, Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, or Snow White’s glass coffin and you can easily call up a whole set of values, assumptions, and feelings with hardly another word. Our reservoir of shared stories (consider also the Greek myths) is essentially a resource for writers who want to make it obvious they’re subverting our cultural mores. It’s shorthand for “Society is fucked up, hold my beer and watch this”. It’s a way of making subtle commentary in an... obvious manner? It’s a unique way of balancing obvious and subtle; it’s the equivalent of roadsigns you only need to glance at to know that you’re driving towards; it’s an ocean of potential stories waiting to be overturned. The ability of writers to take any of these classic objects or situations and drop them into their stories and immediately add a whole slew of connected ideas is fascinating to me. It’s magical.
Which brings us to The Language of Thorns. The collection isn’t exactly labeled “retold/reimagined faiytales” anywhere (it’s a collection of stories that would be read to children in her Grishaverse), but Bardugo says in her author’s note, “That unease [with the ending of Hansel and Gretel] has guided me through these stories […] The more I listened to that note of warning, the more inspiration I found.” The stories indeed feature a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, a prequel to The Little Mermaid, and a reimagining of The Nutcracker.
In one of my gleeful posts as I read the book I ended up gushing that “by writing her own fairytales [Leigh Bardugo] gets to play with our expectations, because we get all the references to our own stories — gingerbread houses, labyrinths holding monsters, clever talking animals — so we have a false sense of security that we know where it’s all going, and then she treats the ending of the stories more like writing a novel and adds more complexity than we expect of stories like Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel” and yes I’m going to quote myself in my own essay-thing because I still think that was a good reaction.
The first story of the collection, Ayama and the Thornwood, makes Bardugo’s intentions clear when the main character literally retells three different tales with improved endings to satisfy the boredom of a beast who finds fairytales too predictable and unrealistic. So it’s, you know, meta.
There’s an excitement there, in reading the fairytales you (sort of) know with their seams torn open to make room for you, stitched into something new. In Bardugo’s stories, the Grimm brothers’ female villains are reexamined, blame is shifted, new ideas are put forward (not all connected to feminism, but the treatment of Hansel and Gretel and The Little Mermaid’s villains, and the creation of a new female villain in Bardugo’s The Too-Clever Fox, make a clear argument about the roles women are given in our fairytales).
This is a nice connection to Girls Made of Snow and Glass: the deeper treatment of women’s motives that make familiar tales new. I’m almost disappointed The Language of Thorns didn’t include a Snow White story to compare and contrast with.
But let’s circle back to Lynet’s love interest in Girls Made of Snow: Nadia, the castle physician. It was the promise of a gay Snow White that drew me to the story, and it’s still a wonderful aspect of the book. Putting women into slots reserved for men is almost always a breath of fresh air, especially when the rest of the story isn’t then adjusted to keep it heterosexual. One reason is because it eliminates the “man always saving the woman” aspect by making it one woman saving another — consider Nadia filling the prince’s role in awakening Lynet from her coffin, and the female river spirit of Little Knife winning the hand in marriage of the beautiful girl. But of course the major reason is getting to see non-heterosexual people in fairytales.
We don’t get this when we’re younger. At least, I didn’t, though I hope that starts changing for kids now. So to read stories where the women love women, where men can love men and women (to reference The Language of Thorns specifically, since we get a bisexual protagonist in one story and a wlw couple in another) feels like — to quote a certain musical — putting ourselves back in the narrative. I can’t change the stories I was read when I was little, but I can (we all can) read the stories that are slowly but surely filling up goodreads’ “lgbt retellings” shelves.
(Possibly it’s weird to use the phrase “putting ourselves back in the narrative” when I’m actually not sure about either author’s sexuality, but this is mostly about the perception of queer readers getting queer retellings anyway. If I read Julia Heslin’s Once more recently I would have loved to add something about her version of reimagining queer fairytales but it’s been a bit too long for it to be fresh in my mind.)
“I put myself back in the narrative” isn’t a flawless parallel for other reasons as well. After all, the whole point about “Eliza and the narrative” is that she took herself out of it in the first place, and then put herself back in. The first action was as much an act of power as the undoing, and queer people never took ourselves out of fairytales in the first place (I don’t think that’s really a thing that happened, anyway). But I couldn’t get that line out of my head as I thought about this, so it seems like the right way to end this ramble.
When we put ourselves back in our narratives, when we tell our touchstone stories with us included, it’s automatically a powerful statement that we belong there. So yes, while this has mostly been me trying to figure out how to say “we all recognize fairytale elements at such an essential level that it gives authors an amazing tool to work with to make their works more nuanced and gives them a basis to build social commentary on”, I want to end this with the point that works created with these tools, narratives constructed on these foundations, are so liberating and important and wonderful because they not only make use of our childhood tales but tell us we belong there.
#girls made of snow and glass#The Language of Thorns#melissa bashardoust#leigh bardugo#lgbt literature#feminist literature#fairytale retelling#the rambles of an overbooked worm#purronronner#allfortheloveofabook#ghost-with-the-toast-babe
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When Cas was talking with the Empty, looking like he was talking to himself, he didn't say "Why do you look like my vessel", he said "Why do you look like me?" The whole scene was like Cas arguing with the angelic/power side of himself, the one bound by Heaven and Chuck and the rules they live by. Do you think this is finally it—ridding Cas of that life and releasing him to Dean for real? That the sun at the end of 13x04 is the new light for his new life, so to speak?
I’m not entirely sure - this was the spec I was kind of fond of before the episode, that he’s be split apart (about the 1 thing I am probably way too invested in is the Lily Sunder exposition on what nephilim are and how that might apply to Cas, who has a soul and a vessel as well as angel grace crammed on top) so I was hoping they might poke at that some more. But I’m malleable about what happens because I just have a few wishes and random things I harp on and no real solid plan for what I need to see/expect to see :P
Since the Empty was entirely its own thing it can only mirror elements of Cas, and I agree with the analysis of it as his guilt and depression, since it laid into him from those angles, yelling exposition that explains his depression arc that’s been made since either the start of Carver era or season 11 depending on where you time it from the narrative actually DEALING with it rather than just suggesting it’s there. I can see how you meta it deeper about representing specific parts of him, but I think main subtextual layer underneath the Empty mocking Cas was pretty blatantly to deal with putting his emotional arc back in the forefront, with reminding us (not exposing anything new at all, even the “love” thing because that happened in season 9 AND 12) about things like the need vs want thing from his perspective. Generally it used a lot of keywords I’d always fall back on to explain Cas’s depression arc like these talking points :P
Also, specifically about Heaven, those angels that came for Jack were scary and organised and clever, which means I think that they may stop writing angels as goofy office workers and make them a little more dangerous. Since they’re a threat to Jack, Cas could very likely take a stand against heaven on Jack’s behalf to prove he’s moved beyond that. It may or may not take a season 9 turn and also turn out to be motivated by the Winchesters, but again, we’ve covered this ground so idk how many reminders we need. Season 9 was only re-telling Cas’s earlier motivations but using Metatron to hang a whole bunch of lampshades on it and to update it to Carver era levels of romantic subtext out of Kripke era unstated feelings.
I think the guilt visions that we saw Cas seeing do all tell of his biggest failures and it STARTS with Metatron stealing his grace, which made my ears perk up because it’s been a while since we’ve seen a quick recap reel of Cas’s life like that (not since 7x17?) and starting with what Metatron did to him contains basically his entire attempt to redeem himself in season 7 & 8, leading to Metatron snatching him up and derailing him onto being human - and all the stuff with the angel war that then led to the “in love with humanity” stuff. The visions do mostly show him dying or going through changes of state because he is dead and going through a change of state. I think of all those failures, the worst pain he felt was towards Sam and Dean - only the grace stealing moment was the result of trying to redeem with Heaven, and dying in 12x23 was specifically because he was switched from trying to follow orders for Sam n Dean’s sake (tying it all up in one big burden bundle) to Team Jack. The season 6-7 deaths and failures might have been more about Heaven if it had included the shot of all the dead angels, but it focused on the horror of things happening to Cas, and his deaths or transitions as a result of it.
Anyway I kind of see Cas as a lost cause to Heaven’s eyes so who knows how that goes but I don’t think he can redeem himself to them and when he tried last, it was a trick and his grace got stolen, or he ended up dragged along working with Hannah, trying to do their missions. Which went swimmingly. In 12x19 he just immediately and with no beating about the bush explains he’s only working with Heaven because of Sam and Dean and makes it clear he’s using them and the fact they offer resources for him rather than because he feels any need to restore his reputation. So I think it was already clear he is done with Heaven, making text what has been fairly obvious since season 9 or 10 when he kept on picking Earth/the Winchesters over Heaven.
Not sure they’ll let him have a clear shot at working out where he goes from here *immediately* but then this season has been working through blockages and important milestones and things that need said at an even more alarming pace than season 12. I really don’t trust anything not to happen, but I do feel like it’s not so simple as it once was for Cas with Jack around, so I’m waiting to see how he affects Cas’s choices and what Cas has to do for him. I expect it to be kinda fluffy but also with regards to the Winchesters, pretty weird. We’ll see >.>
But yeah the sun is a good omen and it was a nice reminder he sees that face as his own. There are a lot more things about Cas I’m neutral on or can see going so many different ways depending on how much tension and drama they want to insert and the fact something has to go wrong and all this positive character development for everyone might not work so well all season long… I mean the overall intent seems really interested in fixing the characters? But short term there are already enormous hurdles and problems just between Sam, Dean and Jack. Adding Cas to the mix means at least some tension on some sides of that dynamic even if Cas returning seems hopeful to at least temporarily restore balance to the force. :P
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I try to do this every year: here's the best media that I encountered, but which was probably not released, in 2017. It’s long!! oops!!
Books
I read 176 books in 2017. My primary reading goal was to prioritize authors of color, ideally making them half of my reading material. This fell apart somewhat in the face of various and intense life stresses, but in the end 40% of the books I read this year were by PoC, up from 10%* from last year, and I'm proud of that. It's something I will continue to prioritize.
* a metric which may be somewhat out of date, as I discovered neato things while looking into Jewish authors!! but I'm too lazy for recalculations, so let's let it stand
Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller. I love this book so much that it took me five months to write a review. Miller wrote it with precise, peculiar inspirations--the identity of a mysterious artist; sessions with a ouija board--and while I traditionally resist the idea that the author is a conduit rather than a creator (yes to authorial responsibility! boo on authorial intent!) I think there can be moments when an author reaches above and beyond themselves. I believe Beagle did this in The Last Unicorn:
A lot of things appeal to people out of their own histories in that story. I feel sometimes like Schmendrick, when the first time he actually casts real magic summoning up the shades of Robin Hood, Maid Marian and the Merry Men...people who never existed, really they’re myths, and yet there they are. And at that point he falls on his face, picks himself up, and thinks: "I wonder what I did...I did something..." Which is very much the way I feel about The Last Unicorn. Finally, fifty years later. (source)
And I believe that Miller does it here. This is an exceptional novel; its purpose and joy and energy is remarkable, and it may be safe to call it my favorite book of the year.
Graceling series by Kristin Cashore. The books stand alone and are all perfectly good; but it's Bitterblue that won me, and I think it benefits from reading the entire series. This uses a speculative concept to explore trauma and abuse in ways that are simultaneously metaphorical, literal, and unique to the worldbuilding. I admire a narrative that's able to capitalize on the potential of its genre in that way, and there's interesting narrative-in-absentia techniques at play here, and, crucially, it's thoughtful and compassionate.
Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. I adore the companion animal trope, and am dubious of dragons; I did not expect that this would be so thorough an exploration of the former as to totally negate the later. It engages almost every question that surrounds this trope, especially re: sapience, personhood, power dynamics; the long-form adventure allows for a diverse and evolving culture. And it's tropey in every way it needs to be to give its premise emotional weight. Multiple books in this series won a 5-star rating, and as many made me cry. It's as in love and as engaged with this trope as I am. Simon Vance's audio narration makes these an especial delight.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr. I read this in the same year as my first Joanna Russ book (The Female Man)--and neither are perfect, but both are invaluable, and the combined effect has stayed with me. But nothing lingered moreso than this Tiptree collection: so exhaustive, so exhausting; the tension between her profound bitterness and daydreaming, between her (presumed, implicit, assumed) male PoV and persistent feminist themes, elevates this collection beyond the limitations of individual stories.
The Devourers by Indra Das. It would be insincere to say that this is what I wish every werewolf novel would be--I love them all uniquely--but this is what I wish every werewolf novel would be: this visceral, this vivid, this inhuman, this engaged with the concept of the Other.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf. The only real goal in life is to love or be loved as Virginia Woolf loved Vita Sackville-West; the energy that emanates from this, passionate and playful and irreverent, is incandescent. I always expect historical books about sex and gender to be restrained or dated, and for good reason, but this has aged so well; it's fluid and complicated, but too quick to become heavy. In every page, a delight.
Honorable mentions in books
Ursula K. Le Guin. I read a handful of her books this year; I didn't love them all equally (The Beginning Place is hardly her most famous but it's my favorite so far) but I'm consistently impressed, no matter how minor the work. She's profoundly skilled; she integrates and expands her central theses in ways that capitalize on the speculative genres she writes in, to great effect.
Octavia E. Butler by Gerry Canavan. I hesitate to say that I loved this biography more than Butler's novels themselves, but that reflects how it felt to read this: it summarized, contextualized, and celebrated Butler's cumulative effort and impact in a way that made me appreciate her anew.
When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore. I read a lot of YA I bounce off of, a lot of magical realism I don't think works; but this I loved, for its specific images, for the way that the fluidity of its style suits its issues of gender, for its beauty and love.
The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson. The energy in this is infectious, and needs to be, as it's as much about a love affair with a speculative premise and a place as with a person--and all those elements are accessible, distinctive, alive.
Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner. Fairyland which feels truly transporting and fantastic, truly fae, is hard to capture. This is such a quiet book, unassuming in structure and frame, but its depiction of fairyland is one of the most convincing that I've ever seen.
Games
Nier: Automata. I watched this played on release, and called it then, in March: game of the year. I was not mistaken. There's more this could do, further it could go; but what it does, with its androids and tropes, its meta elements and narrative structure and soundtrack, is phenomenal. One of the most remarkable things that a game can do is be profoundly wedded to its interactive medium, because few other platforms have the opportunity to interact with the consumer so directly--and Automata achieves that, to great effect.
Kirby series. I have no particular love of platforms, Nintendo, or nostalgia; but these looked cute, and: they are. Kirby is shaped like friendship, and the softness and colors of level design, the creative gameplay of Kirby's transformations, the sincerely impressive interaction with level elements in games like Epic Yarn, are a complete package. These brought me unmitigated joy; that's not something I often find.
Honorable mentions in video games
Dishonored 2. The plot and setting hasn't stuck with me as much as the first game. But to internalize criticism and then go on to make a more diverse game is fantastic (and it pays off, in Meagan Foster especially), and the small, almost-domestic moments and ongoing lore/religion in the worldbuilding are very much my thing.
Dark Souls III DLC. The base game was on my list last year, so this entry feels like cheating--but these were substantial additions, big worlds and significant narrative and so many new monster designs, all of which compliment the base game. It's an impressive product, and I wish more DLC resembled it.
Closure. A little indie puzzle platformed that exceeds expectations for that genre because the way that its core game mechanic interacts with player, art design, atmosphere, and narrative is so successful. (It even makes up for sometimes-finicky physics.)
Visual Media
Car Boys. I'm disappointed that Nick Robinson proved not to be the person we wanted him to be, but that doesn't change the profound impact that this series had on me. Not only is it a fantastic example of emergent narrative, it simultaneously embraces my fear of existential horror and my profound longing for a greater meaning. This served a similar function for me as did Critical Role last year, despite dissimilarities in tone and content.
Dark Matter season 3. The boy and I have been watching this together, and with few misstep we've been consistently satisfied with the way this series combines found family tropes and genre mainstays. But season 3 is a cut above. It's still all those things, but the ongoing, consistent character development, particularly of the female characters, most especially of the Android, is phenomenal. There were episodes that made me cry, that I would call legitimately perfect.
Blame! I've enjoyed everything I've seen by Polygon Pictures, including Knights of Sidonia, but this is the best they could be: tropes I love, a perfect setting for their visual style and capabilities; great pacing, writing that does interesting things with its subgenre. Without competition, the best film I saw this year; it looks great and it’s just so engaging to watch.
Person of Interest. Found family/AI feels is in essence all I've ever wanted from a narrative, and this delivers, delivers in droves: it has the crime serial format I love but, like Fringe, deviates from format to great effect. But it's the particular combination of themes that sold me: using AI as a launchpad to explore all varieties of personhood and socialization.
Honorable mentions in visual media
Yuri!!! on Ice. There is a need in the world for stories like this; queer love stories, stories about what it means to become one's best self, stories which are funny and sweet and profoundly empathetic. This year started poorly (and just kept on keepin' on, but:) and there was a sense of karmic balance that this existed post-election. It's escapism without being hollow; it's how I want the world to be.
Polygon. Monster Factory goes here. So does Awful Squad. But the boy and I have been branching out and watching almost anything that pops up on this channel; the balance between inoffensive good humor and video game nerdom is really likable.
#Juu reads#Juu plays#Juu watches other people play#Juu watches#reference#too many to tag#Temeraire series#James Tiptree Jr.#Indra Das#Octavia E. Butler#Nier: Automata#Kirby#Dishonored#Dark Souls III#Closure#Car Boys#Person of Interest#Yuri on Ice#Monster Factory
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